


Forgotten Ways

by Donda, SingleWhiteCatLady



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst and Feels, Bullying, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, only in a nightmare but it's there as a trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-12 17:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13552527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingleWhiteCatLady/pseuds/SingleWhiteCatLady
Summary: My name is Max.My world is fire and blood.Once, I was a cop. A road warrior searching for a righteous cause. A way to prove my worth, not only to those who had rejected me but to those who feared my kind. Feared us for our power, both natural and unnatural. Causers of hurricanes, controllers of thoughts, all the worst made out to be our whole. Humanity couldn’t trust what they didn’t understand.As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. Ancient pacts were dissolved and old wounds bled anew. In my case, I am a man parted from my own kind, probably the last of my kind. Of two worlds, and yet of none. It’s hard not to break under that.





	1. Chapter 1

_ My name is Max. _

_ My world is fire and blood. _

_ Once, I was a cop. A road warrior searching for a righteous cause. A way to prove my worth, not only to those who had rejected me but to those who feared my kind. Feared us for our power, both natural and unnatural. Causers of hurricanes, controllers of thoughts, all the worst made out to be our whole. Humanity couldn’t trust what they didn’t understand. _

_ As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. Ancient pacts were dissolved and old wounds bled anew. In my case, I am a man parted from my own kind, probably the last of my kind. Of two worlds, and yet of none. It’s hard not to break under that. _

 

* * *

The first time he truly fears his captors isn’t when they’re chasing him across the powder lakes. Isn’t when they’ve sent him and his car flying and tumbling over the sand and stone - it isn’t even when they chain him to the back of his car and throw rocks at him as he struggles to keep up. It’s when they ruck up the back of his shirt two days after this. After the medical examinations and the tests and the rattling of his cage bars. It’s after he’s bitten and raged and proven himself more animal than man, and they realize the only way they’ll be able to make any use of him is bound, gagged, and muzzled.

The first time he fears his captors is when they pin him on his face across a tabletop and shove the back of his shirt up, cold slimy fingers running along the muscles of his back, between the faint lines and swirls of freckles and faint veins that mark the presence of wings hidden beneath his skin by magic and effort.

As they cut his hair and tattoo his back, all Max can think about is the pain stabbing through his hidden wings. He wonders how badly this will damage them. Will the ink stay on his back or will it cover his wings when they emerge? Will he be able to fly if he needs to? He counts himself lucky that these people don’t know enough to recognize the faint wing markings on his back. Perhaps, if the Organic weren’t drooling and bleeding from the hard plate of Max’s brow swung harshly into his mouth, maybe if his fingers weren’t so rough and hateful in his receding anger, the Organic Mechanic would have felt the minute variation of texture across Max’s shoulder blades. Maybe this would have gone a lot differently. 

Max’s kind weren’t well-liked in the Old World - dirty, vile, less than human - and he can’t imagine that opinion has improved in the years since. Not when they were blamed for the downfall of the world. They angered God, brought sickness on man, and dried up the oil wells, dried up the water and poisoned it with radiation and sludge. Or so they said. Humanity blamed them for everything. But had there truly been an innocent party in the murder of the earth? No. But people fear what they don’t understand, and hate what they fear, and his kind were killed in droves, before humanity turned to slaughtering one another.

Max had done what he’d thought wisest, hidden himself, his nature, since before the Fall. He can pass as fully human easily, which, he supposes, is why he’s still alive and the others aren’t. But now being such a rarity makes him all the more vulnerable. If he’s discovered now, he’s not just the enemy anymore, he’s a novelty. He could be killed, or worse - kept and studied, dissected, or turned into a pet for this “Immortan.”

Now, as long as he remains in control of himself, as long as he doesn’t centralize the pain, his body and magic won’t react and they’ll never know. He pulls everything in, pushes the pain into the periphery of his mind and being. Tells himself it’s all static, like the radio they’d taken from him. Nothing but static in the air around him. That is, until a hum starts under his skin, an awareness - the sizzling sound of heated metal coming closer and closer - a branding iron, he’d bet on that. All the pale painted boys around him bear the same mark on the backs of their necks. Everyone he’d seen since he’d been dragged up by his throat had the same mark.

Cattle - he’s about to be branded like cattle!

He snarls, kicks out violently, jerks his arms free with a twist of his body and a swing of his legs into the faces of the boys holding him. He runs. Relies on an innate sense of direction - turns first east then north through hallways lined with thick rusting pipes.

His car is a crumpled mess surrounded by boys with torches and grinding wheels. He feels almost sick looking at it, feels a piece of himself pulled taut and thin and near breaking.

_ No time, no time!  _

He lunges over it, runs. Sloughs through a pit filled with water, brackish runoff. The boys find him, try to wrestle him down. He thrashes, wrenches himself free.

Door after door after door -  _ STOP RUNNING, MAX! _

Sunlight, freedom -  _ YOU LET US DIE! _

There is a sheer drop in front of him, and he feels his feet  _ cling _ to the earth in desperation, to keep himself from falling to his death. He feels the near overwhelming urge to release his wings to help pull himself back from the ledge. 

The whoops and cries and snarls of the men and boys echo behind him, getting closer. He has only two choices: be caught, or fly.

If he flies, they’ll know - they’ll  _ see _ . Is it worth the risk? It won’t matter, if it means they can’t catch him. He has ways of hiding. Has been doing it all his life. The only problem is his shirt is in the way of his wings, and the chain around his wrists is just enough added weight that he doubts he’d be able to keep himself in the air. 

A third option presents itself just as the pale boys burst through the last set of doors at his back and run at him, cheering in sick glee. In rushed desperation Max takes it, leaping toward the crane hook and hooking his chain into it as it lowers toward him.

To no avail.

They recapture him, they drag him back, they pin him. It hurts worse because he had been so close, and yet they’d caught him. With hateful hands on the back of his head and nails digging into freshly tattooed skin, they press the brand against his nape, and he screams. 

It’s sheer luck that he doesn’t pass out and revert back to his natural form.

He spends months waiting for a chance to escape. Never once is he given the opportunity in this form: he’s always tied, often muzzled, and constantly watched. Even without the knowledge of his heritage, Max’s blood makes him priceless. 

Max feels his blood boiling with each passing day. The frustration is almost a physical pain, like the chafe of chains or his muzzle. Like the crackle of electricity along his nerves when they ram the prod into his abdomen or crotch and drop him from his cage.

It’s being constantly watched that prevents him from reverting and slipping through the bars of his cage to escape in his natural form, too. He could. He’s been desperate enough a few times to nearly try it, but the Blood Shed is a constant hub of activity, slow and dismal though it may be at times, with sporadic lulls and unpredictable influxes of activity. He never once feels confident enough that he could sneak away without being caught or spotted by somebody. And being caught in that form would almost certainly be worse than being caged like an animal and used for his blood.

He feels himself withering, a slow, cold kind of encroaching numbness. Despair, creeping in with his anger. He vaguely remembers stories - warnings - that despair and anger and desperation could darken you faster than anything. You had to keep a center - had to keep a balance.

Max doesn’t know if he even remembers what balance is. He’s been so long consumed by revenge and desperation that he doubts there’s any point in trying to chase away the darkness any longer. He’s probably as dark inside as the ink on his back.

He loses count of the days. He snarls and bares his teeth when the Organic Mechanic comes close to his cage, spins him in a way he supposes is the sick man’s way of playing with his toys. Max wants to set him on fire, wants to get out of this cage, grab the man’s scarred head and shove it into the flames of that damned forge where they keep the branding irons. But the only way he can get out of the cage any time soon is by magic and he tells himself that would be risky. Too risky. He has to bide his time. Has to retain as much of his strength as he can because sooner or later there will be a chance. Sooner or later he will be able to slip from his cage, climb the chain to the ceiling and make for that tiny window he keeps his gaze focused on during the day. The one he imagines letting himself soar out of.

“I’ve got a War Boy running on empty - hook up that Full Life.”

Here it goes again.

He braces his feet against the edges of the cage, tries to keep himself wedged tightly in there with his knees around his ears, but the jolt of electricity puts all his muscles into spasm - he’s surprised he still has control of his bladder to be honest - and he drops out toward the ground like a sack of pebbles.

He pays attention because he has to. Can’t afford not to.

“Organic. Hitch up his blood bag.”

Hitch up, he’d said. Max had pictured perhaps being tied up to a car seat, not strapped to the hood. It’s degrading, horrific. Max is shaken and rocked and whipped around and around until every muscle and bone in his body hurts. He just wants it to end! Escape, death, something! But it’s as close to a glimpse of freedom as he’s gotten yet. At this point he’s practically forgotten that he  _ can _ change forms. He’s been human so long. But it wouldn’t help him now anyway. He hangs on for the ride and waits for his chance.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up after the storm, small and buried in sand, his wings emerged and pressed painfully under his shirt. Sand goes flying as he snaps himself reflexively back to regular size. He pushes down his panic and takes his bearings. Nobody saw him. It’s okay. 

He hurts, bright burning pain along every nerve, his skin grated raw by the sand and wind and toss of his body during the wreck. Everything  _ hurts _ and the needle in his chest throbs along with his pulse. His hands shake and twitch as he pulls the needle out, sucks in heaving lungfuls of air in an attempt to calm himself. Panic makes you reckless. He needs to keep his head, has to stay calm. 

He focuses on getting free. The War Boy is probably dead. Nobody would see him if he shrunk back down now, but the magic involved means everything he wears shrinks with him, the muzzle included. And of course, magic being what it is (rarely helpful in the way you need it to be, Max has always found) the chain would remain intact - had remained intact - the magic on it slowly fading along its length, leaving Max still tethered to the War Boy’s wrist. There’s never any help to be found in that form, which is why Max forwent it long ago. Human is the only way to survive now.

Max stumbles toward the driver, drags him out and fights with the chain. The straps are locked, the shotgun is an impotent disappointment - teeth. Anything! 

The sound doesn’t initially reach him. His ears are clogged and his mind whirring too fast for his senses to keep up with. His wings twitch below his skin, hidden and aching. He goes still, head lifted and turned toward the noise, the rest of the world slowly fading out of existence.

The rig.

He takes the War Boy’s boot, and hauls him onto his shoulders, dragging the door with him as well. He feels his heart pounding erratically in his chest as he approaches the truck. The voices in his head rise and fall with the beat of his heart.  _ Calm. Stay calm. This is your only chance so don’t fuck it up!  _ He shakes his head, breathes in and out and steps around the back of the rig.

He finds himself faced by six women and his best shot at freedom, and his mind is on a single track. 

Escape. Survive.

He shakes a little as he raises the gun, forces his arm to steady. The one holding the hose is pregnant. He only realizes it as she tilts the hose to turn it off. He shivers, shakes his head a little and lifts the gun. Flicks the barrel at them.

“Water.”

The woman with the shaved hair and black forehead has the steel in her gaze of a person not afraid to kill if she has to - or if it would be easier for her. He wants to keep her as far from himself as he can.

He keeps his gun aimed on them, particularly on the pregnant one as she holds the hose up toward him and he snatches it from her hand. She seems to be important somehow. They wouldn’t dare make a move against him - thinking he has a loaded weapon - if she’s at the end of his sights.

Under the glisten of water, he doesn’t catch the sheen of faint lines originating from six points on her back. They’re faint and unfamiliar, and Max has other things on his mind. She stands stiff in front of him, something powerful and barely contained in the rigid set of her shoulders. He tries to ignore her, keeps his focus on the others. The one-armed woman with the shorn head - she seems to be the leader, watching him with a wary kind of discontentment, barely tolerant of his presence until she figures out what he wants. Her eyes are piercing, as if she can see straight into his soul.

_ Go—QUICKRUN! Before they catch you! Stupid BUG! _

_ You let us DIE! _

Max turns his focus to what he needs. Water first. Freedom next. Survival, when the Imperator-gone-rogue tackles him while he’s distracted. By luck more than anything else, he pins her and takes control of the situation. He doesn’t feel bad about taking their rig, but doesn’t realize he’s set in motion a cascade of events that will change his life and even his perception of the world.


	2. Chapter 2

The Rig makes a hideous noise, lurches as if it may come unhinged from the ground and tumble when they hit the rocks. Max turns in his seat, stares over his shoulder with his heart in his throat. He barely knows these people and already he’s failed them. He can feel the voices, the ghosts in his head, roaring, clamoring that there is a new face amongst them. Soft and scarred and clutching the bulge of her stomach. Another face, another voice added to the list of his failures.

She peeks around the back of the cab, eyes wide, breathless. She smiles triumphantly at him.

She’s alive. 

Max feels a weight lifted and the crushing pain in his injured hand seems to double as his heartbeat returns to normal. He smiles back, for the first time in longer than he can remember, and lifts his aching hand, thumb up as a little salute, then turns back to the wrench the Imperator has rigged up to help them steer. It was stupid of him to fear. These women can handle themselves just fine.

It’s as he’s turning his eyes back to the road ahead that he hears a wet little slip of a noise, and a gasp and a creak of the door, and he snaps his head back around in time to see what he thought he would never see. She hangs from the open door, its hinges creaking and giving out, and six beautiful wings unfurl from her back, gold and thin and graceful, tapering to fine points. The intricate details of the delicate lines of veins and glitter of metallic crescents catch Max’s eye even in the flurry of the moment. It burns into the backs of his eyes, permanently pressed into his mind in just that fraction of a heartbeat.

A wave of magic breaks over him. It’s weak, but still overwhelming after years of not knowing anything but the feel of his own magic. She’s reaching out for help, and Max responds in kind, sending a burst of his own weak magic out to her to try and give the boost she needs to save herself. It’s instinct. A core need that is deeper than blood and self. He doesn’t even realize he’s done it.

But it’s too late. For some reason she can’t fully change forms and the door breaks away from the Rig. Max shoves his head farther out the window, only to see her hit the ground, right in the path of their pursuers. 

She doesn’t move, crumpled and broken, as the giant truck rolls over her. Max pulls his magic back in, tight and close. He barely hears the women behind him crying and screaming in despair, barely feels the tug of one of them pulling at his shirt sleeve, nails sharp even through the fabric. He shudders, feels hollowed out inside - he wasn’t alone. All these years, and he wasn’t alone - there had been another. Had they been the last?

What does it matter? What does any of it matter? She’s lost, taken under the wheels and gone and he is alone. He feels the mournful ache of this renewed knowledge. It hurts more now than it had ages ago when the last great forest had burned. When the charred small bodies of Fae could be found in crowded spaces.

“Stop! Turn the Rig around. Go back for her!”

Max wants to go back for her. He wants to so badly. She might still be alive. He can only hope she is. But if they stop now, they’ll all be caught. All of this will have been for nothing. Those girls, the woman beside him - everything will have been in vain. He shakes his head, forces the word out through gritted teeth. “No.”

“Tell him to turn the Rig around!”

The Imperator is staring at him with a new kind of intensity. “Did you see it?” 

He can’t help but feel, from the choke of her voice and the redness of her eyes, that she knows what he knows. She knows what that woman was, and she knows she could be still alive. And she knows they can’t go back, as much as they want to, as much as it hurts. They cannot go back.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a long day and a longer night, and after he and the Imperator switch places after they leave behind the marshy grounds of the bog, Max decides to risk a little sleep. He can hold his human form better than most Fae can, being only half that by blood, his magic weakened but his ability to disguise himself as fully human strengthened. Whereas fairies usually revert back to their smaller form any time they fall asleep, Max can remain human as long as he has the strength. But if he lets himself go without sleep for much longer, he knows he won’t have the strength anymore.

These women must have known their companion was a fairy, and part of Max’s brain assures him that that means they’d be accepting of his own fairy heritage, too. But his defenses are too solid. He’s spent too long trying to be human to let all that fall now. He doesn’t know for sure how they’d react to finding out he is Fae kind, so he decides it’s best not to take the risk. It’s a very perilous situation when anyone knows you’re practically a bug.

He trusts this woman enough to sleep in her presence, but not quite enough to reveal what he truly is. He doesn’t know that he’d ever trust anybody enough to reveal that.

Max awakes with a start, his usual nightmares tearing him from his rest. He strikes out on reflex, but the threat is suddenly gone.

The Imperator doesn’t even flinch. “It’s okay. Sleep. Get some rest.”

She has been amazingly cool around him, oddly gentle with him, since they first earned each other’s trust in that battle before Angharad fell. He is obviously a dangerous man (not that she can’t match his danger easily) but she doesn’t treat him like he is. He feels like she knows him almost as well as he knows himself. He wonders briefly if his secret is actually safe, but he pushes the idea away as the paranoia of his damaged mind. Humans can’t sense magic. As long as he doesn’t show his true form, he’s safe.

 

* * *

 

Max had glimpsed hope in the world, long ago, and now it is gone, and he watches the same thing happen to the Imperator. His hearing is good, but from the cab of the War Rig, he only catches a few words here and there as the group of women talk. It’s the Imperator’s reaction that truly tells him what has happened. Her home is lost too. 

He keeps to himself that night. The old women, the Vuvalini, don’t trust him. He can feel it. He had watched one of them nearly point a gun at him and the War Boy when they first approached, and she certainly would have if the Imperator (Furiosa, he has learned from what some of the others have said), hadn’t stopped her.

All the women talk at length, but he is left out. Except that he can sense that they are talking about him, too. Their whispers don’t reach even his sensitive ears, but he can feel their glances on his back. He doesn’t mind not being included in their discussion. He’s not part of their group after all, and he’s not sticking around much longer. But they make him uncomfortable, as if they’re scrutinizing him. He occupies himself with his little cloth map. It’s just paranoia again.

Furiosa does end up coming to talk to him. She says they’re going to go across the salt, and offers him a bike of his own. He’s surprised, after their apparent distrust, that they would want him to come with. But he’s already made his decision. His place is not with them. He can never be anything other than a loner. To do otherwise is too dangerous for him, and too dangerous for others.

He tells her he’ll make his own way, and she deflates, visibly disappointed. He feels a little bad. He trusts her a great deal, but this is not his fight anymore. She looks for a moment like she wants to say something else, to tell him something important, but instead she gives a small accepting nod and turns to leave.

Part of him wants to stop her, to keep her from running like she plans to do. There’s no hope out there in the salt. “You know, hope is a mistake. If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll uh… You’ll go insane.”

He senses her stare on the back of his head, and then she turns to leave without a word.

Max stays out of sight after that. It’s long after the others who escaped from the Citadel have gone to sleep, but Furiosa stays up talking to her clan. Max sits on the far side of the War Rig, out of sight, but their quiet voices drift to his ears. He doesn’t pay much attention until suddenly one of them speaks more loudly, shock in her voice.

“They’re gone?” It’s the youngest of the Vuvalini, the one who had accepted Furiosa first and introduced herself as the Valkyrie.

“Long time ago…” Furiosa’s voice is tired.

“Let’s see, girl,” one of the older ones murmurs after a moment.

There is silence for a long while. Max digs through his jacket pockets and pulls out his old cloth map again to finish what he had started. He’ll be gone first thing in the morning, but in the meantime, it’s going to be a long night.

“There’s enough there. We can heal that.”

“You can?” There’s surprise and a little bit of hope in Furiosa’s voice. Max’s ears perk up at the odd turn of the conversation. He can’t quite put together what they’re talking about.

“It’s an old injury. It will take all of us. But we can do it.”

“I never thought…” Furiosa’s voice fades out. “It was a steel blade.”

“After this long your balance should be restored, and they’re based just enough in magic for us to have a greater effect on them. Hold on, we’ll have you back in the air yet.”

Max freezes. Magic? What are they talking about? A soft glow bounces off the sand beneath the War Rig, pure and white, and a burst of magic washes over the area. Max drops his map, compass, and needle in the sand. He scrambles to his feet and peers around the front of the tanker, trying to see without being seen. This isn’t possible. They can’t possibly be, can they?

The Vuvalini stand in a circle around Furiosa, each reaching out to touch her back or her shoulder or her arm. He can’t see her very well, but the glow intensifies, and slowly coalesces into the shape of wings on Furosa’s back. It becomes almost blinding to look at, and then from the glow emerge four beautiful wings, shaped like a dragonfly’s and shining with iridescence in the moonlight. The Vuvalini step back, and Furiosa looks over her shoulder, in awe of her own wings, and flutters them lightly.

Max ducks quickly backward as her head turns in his direction. He stumbles back and has to lean against the tanker for balance, his breaths quickening.  _ They’re fairies. They’re all fairies. _ Suddenly he’s not alone again, but faced with a group of his own kind, he finds himself absolutely terrified.

He was told he was a joke. His existence was shameful. Born of two worlds but never fully a part of either. He was never fully accepted in the Old World, and these are almost certainly fairies from the Old World. Why would they accept him any more than the others had?

He bites - presses his teeth into the joint of his hand where thumb meets palm and  _ bites _ , feels himself twisting inside, feels the magic holding him in human proportions slipping. It’s like falling, but worse - so much worse because as the ground rushes up to meet him he loses part of himself, loses everything he’d tried to hold in for so long he’s forgotten the days. He drops to his knees, feels the grains of sand against his brow like pebbles, sees his footprints as miniature dunes all around him. The painful pinch of his wings caught under his clothing blurs his focus.

_ Enough! ENOUGH! Breathe! Breathe, what if they find you like this! What if they SEE! _

He tries to pull himself together again. He huddles up against the tire of the War Rig as he forces his panicked breathing to slow and his mind to calm enough to think rationally.

The warmth of magic has faded and Max can’t look. He can’t watch, but he can feel it in the sound of breathlessness from the other side of the Rig. The soft whispers of encouragement. Part of him hates them for it, for how easy it is to find solace in one another. He sits there on his heels, small and helpless and alone and listens to their quiet conversation, even though no words make sense. Maybe it’s the Fae tongue. Maybe they’re just too far away and his ears too small at this moment. Maybe it’s his mind working against him again.

He tries to force himself back to human proportions but can’t - his heart jags and pounds painfully in his chest and he crashes to his knees again with a half sob, and feels grit sticking to the wetness on his cheeks. He rubs it away angrily with both hands. He snarls and scratches at his back under his shirt - the press of his wings, the state of himself.

He’s ashamed. He’s angry and hurt and so many things he told himself he would never be again - and then he hears the footsteps. He sees Furiosa’s shadow coming around the front of the Rig toward him. Now that he knows what she is, he feels like her shadow is a lie, and fear bubbles in his core.

_ She’ll SEE! She’ll KNOW! She’ll realize what you are - an ugly little half-blood BUG! _

He scrambles up, wings flicking under his shirt, and stumbles away, hides in the black shadow of the Rig, scrambles up the side of a tire and conceals himself in the rim. He can see her, though her face is hidden in darkness. She seems to glow in the moonlight - a shimmer. She looks left and right, peers down and he notices he’s left his map, compass, and needle lying there in the sandy imprint he left before he shrank.

He holds his breath, feels his heart beating in his teeth.

She doesn’t speak, just stares down at the map, then left and right, finally out toward the Plains. After a moment she shuffles away, back to her kin without saying a word.

Max sits there for a long time, watching them and shivering in the chill of the night. He fights - snarls and beats his fists against his chest and brow but can’t shift himself back to man-size. He’s stuck like this, freezing and small and alone… His eyes run constantly, body trembling in fear and despair and cold.

Eventually he risks it, darts out to collect his map, needle, and compass, and bundles himself up in the map under the engine where the sand is still warm. He tries to breathe through clogged nostrils but it’s difficult and he lies awake for hours rubbing wasted moisture from his eyes, hoping they won’t find him. It’s going to be a long night.


	3. Chapter 3

When he wakes in the morning, dazed and groggy, face sticky with tears and salt, he’s human-sized again and his map is stuck to the back of his neck. It takes him a moment to find his needle and compass in the sand, and wriggle out from under the Rig.  
  
The Vuvalini women are huddled close around a small fire with Furiosa. The younger one with black hair and feathers in her braids lifts her eyes but looks away quickly, blows steam from the rim of her cup.  
  
They pack, eat some of the wilted greens from the back of the Rig, roll what they can’t eat in strips of cloth and tuck it away. They’ll eat those first, then move on to the harder things, the produce that won’t spoil by midday tomorrow. Max can’t eat much. His stomach feels bubbly in an unpleasant way.  
  
He takes the bike they give him, and the supplies. Doesn’t speak. He stays on the outskirts of their group. He feels like an interloper. Like a stone in a bowl soup - out of place and worthless, just something to cut your gum on - a nuisance. The Vuvalini women, the Sisters and Furiosa work around him. He does his share, but feels like he’s in the way the whole time. Feels like he may just - just _pop_ small again for some inexplicable reason.  
  
He watches the elder one, the one with short white hair, syphon guzzoline from the Rig into each bike and into some cans. It doesn’t seem like nearly enough.  
  
They’re going to die.  
  
If the fallout doesn’t get them, they’ll starve to death or get eaten by cannibals. The Sisters and the War Boy would go first… The others - Furiosa and her kin - they could shrink down, make their dwindling supplies last longer - they could fly faster than any bike could carry them. They might live, but the others…  
  
It’s not his problem. They’ll do what they want to do. What they feel is right. Anything they find out there would be better than what’s chasing them now.  
  
They give him a wide berth, and Furiosa sends him a long look, acknowledging, and pulls her goggles down. He watches them until they are black spots fading into the distance, nothing but the sound of wind across the Plains.  
  
They’re going to die.  
  
He looks at the bike standing beside him, then back out at the Plains.  
  
 _Where are you, Max?  
Where are you?  
You promised to help us.  
  
_It flashes before his eyes like an atom bomb. Bright and red and horrid. A black mask with eyes burning and righteous, and a knife from behind.  
  
Death.  
  
The silence is crushing. The isolation. He’s never noticed it before. He can see so far in any direction it’s as if the curve of the world is laid out before him. And there’s no one in sight but the figures moving quickly away.  
  
Magic, he’d been taught so long ago it feels more like an idea of a dream - nothing so solid that he could call it his own - magic calls out to magic. A Fae on his own is a Fae destined for insanity. And insanity warps magic, changes it. Turns it dark…  
  
Max hasn’t been around magic since… He can’t remember, truthfully. He had thought he had been the last for so long, the idea that there could still be others out there, other Fae, seems impossible. He’s always considered himself lucky, to a point. He is half Fae, his connection to magic was never as deep, never as complete as his father’s had been. He’d been able to survive the death of his kin. The Death of Fae.  
  
He’d been able to survive the isolation. The loneliness, the insanity. He’d thought himself so far removed from his blood that it wouldn’t hurt him to see the proof that he is not truly the last of his kind flee to certain death.  
  
But it does.  
  
It _pulls_ in his chest - soul deep - and he knows staring out after them: it’s the Immortan’s fault. That horrid man-thing… They fled from him, his rule, and his shadow.  
  
Immortan Joe fancies himself a Warrior King… But what is a warrior without a weapon? What is a king without a kingdom? What is a warlord without an army?  
  
Green… Furiosa, her kin and the Sisters fled in search of green. A land they could call their own. Freedom… But, Max knows that the Plains of Silence are _silent_ for a reason. The Dead can not scream warnings, or beg mercy. There is no life on the Salt. Water? Maybe… Days out there, some stinking, poison salt marsh like the one they’d passed through. Vaster and uglier than anything they’d seen yet. There would be no life, no green out there.  
  
He has a feeling Furiosa knows this, that her kin know it… Better to die together than live alone forever…  
  
And in that instant he knows that he can’t do it. He can’t let them go to their inevitable end on the Salt. Even if they hate him for what he is, even if they shun him and send him away, somehow it would be better to know they are alive somewhere and he is not the last.  
  
Better they _tried_ instead of lying down and dying soft… Isn’t that what the War Boy had said?  
  
He grinds his teeth, fights with himself as he stomps over to his bike and kicks it to a start. Mutters under his breath that he is stupid. They would all die—  
  
But there is a chance… Such a chance.  
  
The Vuvalini are fairies. They could… They have a better chance turning around than they do charging the salts. And he can’t stand the thought, the reality, that if he lets them go he would be alone again. More so than before. More so than ever.  
  
He sees the look of surprise and joy on the redhead’s face as he speeds past them, and the strange look of relief on Furiosa’s face as the troop slows to a halt.  
  
The plan seems simple enough. A ‘hard day’ is an understatement. He knows Furiosa can tell, anybody smart could.  
  
Furiosa doesn’t want to go back. She hates that place… But they go anyway. They go because Furiosa is frighteningly intelligent and she knows. They have a chance. If the Vuvalini could work out something, some magic or another, to help, they could do it - take the Citadel for their own and start again. Rebuild their corner of the world in a kinder, loving image: cradled to a mother’s bosom instead of pressed under a tyrant’s thumb.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a hard day, and the Warrior King is dead. He’s gone, and they made it. But none of that matters to Max, because the monster and his men nearly took Furiosa down with them. She was ready to die to take him out, and now she _is_ dying.  
  
Max had turned back and brought them out of the Salt because he couldn’t stand to lose the last of his kind. Not again. But now he realizes there was more to it than that. There was Furiosa. He feels a connection to her that’s far deeper than just shared heritage. He trusts her more than he has trusted anybody in far longer than he can remember, and he realizes that more so than losing his own kind, he can’t stand the thought of losing her.  
  
She’s barely breathing, makes an awful, wet, sucking sound with each breath. The light fades slowly from her eyes, the glow from her skin.  
  
He sits by her side, watching and feeling helpless, his hand near her mouth to feel her slow, rasping breaths. To feel that she’s still alive, at least for the moment. One of the Vuvalini sits on the other side of her, whispering, chanting over her, pressing her hands to her and willing her magic to heal her wounds. Max feels it flow over him, warm and relaxing, yet at the same time it makes his muscles tense in fear. He can’t let them find out.  
  
It does nothing.  
  
“Why isn’t it working? Why is she making that noise?” It’s the youngest one who finally speaks up.  
  
Max doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t look at anyone but Furiosa.  
  
“I can’t heal it,” the old Vuvalini beside Furiosa answers. “The blade must have been steel. It kills Fae kind from the inside out, disrupts our inner balance, saps any magic thrown at it… There’s nothing I can do.”  
  
Max stares in horror. Fairies can survive a good deal, can heal themselves of most injuries, but not when steel is involved. This, he was taught at a very young age. Always be careful of steel. It hadn’t had much of an impact on his life - steel or not, he could never heal quite as well as a full-blooded fairy - but steel is unnatural, too processed, too far removed from nature. It takes a fairy’s strength and magic away from them. Any wound inflicted by steel cannot be healed by magic, and can be as deadly to a Fae as it would be to a mortal.  
  
“She’s pumping air into her chest cavity,” the Vuvalini continues. “She’s collapsing her lungs, one breath at a time.” She sits by, motionless now. She’s educated, but at a loss. Mortal wounds are something fairies rarely have to deal with.  
  
The gears whir in Max’s head. He has to do something, even if he has to improvise a bit. He can’t make things much worse - without help, he knows Furiosa is going to die. Fairy magic can’t heal her - Max’s fairy side can do nothing - but maybe his human side can. He’s never relied much on his fairy healing powers, but instead has picked up an array of improvised solutions to injuries inflicted in the Wasteland. He moves on instinct and half-remembered things.  
  
Relieve the pressure. Take the air out so her lungs can reinflate. That’s all he needs to do. There’s a box on the floor beside Furiosa, and he dives for it, digs around in the collection of things that look like they must have been that twisted doctor’s version of medical tools. He finds a knife, and rubs its blade. Steel or not, it’ll have to do. He can’t let her die.  
  
“I know,” he tells the Vuvalini quietly. He knows this looks bad, but it’s all they can do. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking. Doesn’t know what any of them are thinking. He only knows that he has to do this.  
  
“I am so sorry.” He can’t help but apologize before he jams it between her ribs. He may be trying to save her life, but he also can’t stand the thought of intentionally causing her pain. He makes it quick. He gives the blade a twist and the air rushes out as she gasps in pain. It hisses and froths the blood around his fingertips.  
  
“I know, I know.” It must hurt like hell, but at least she’s breathing. He shoves a bit of tubing into the Vuvalini woman’s hands along with some cloth. “Put that on there, press it in—” Furiosa slowly comes back to life, her eyes staring at him again in shock and sadness. “Hey. Hey.” He cradles her head, pulls her to his ear as she tries to speak. Her lips move but barely any sound comes out.  
  
“Home.” And then she goes limp, and Max’s heart jumps back into his throat. He can’t lose her. His hands shake. Her skin feels so cold.  
  
“She’s exsanguinated. Drained all her blood.”  
  
Blood. All she needs is blood, and the Organic Mechanic had called him a universal donor. Max fumbles instantly for the tube at his shoulder. He had cringed at it when he first picked up the pack, the memory of being a forced donor still too recent, but now he’s incredibly grateful. His hands are a blur of motion, uncoiling the tube and attaching needles. He presses the needle in hard to the artery in his inner arm, deeper than he probably should, but he barely feels it. He sees the silvery fear in the white haired girl’s eyes as she holds the tubing up, and again as she holds the needle in place in Furiosa’s arm. Max’s hands still only when his blood is flowing into her veins and his hands are cradling her head again.  
  
The Vuvalini woman beside him stares, something unnamable in her watering eyes, in the stillness and surety and awe of her slack lips. Furiosa is a limp weight in his arms, her breath wheezing and hissing and bubbling out of the tube in her side. Lips as pale as ashes. He doesn’t know if this will work, but he’ll give everything he has if it comes to that. He just needs her to live. He’ll give everything.  
  
“Max. My name is Max. That’s my name.”  
  
She breathes.  
  
And Max just stays, cradling her head, stroking her hair.  
  
With every heartbeat, her grey skin slowly pinks. Warms. The air seems to buzz. The engine hums. Someone whispers a song, a prayer, magic sounds. Her breath evens, the wheezing fades, and Max starts to relax. Eventually he releases her head and sits back at her feet, leaning against the wall tiredly. He stares at the blood tube, imagines he can see the flow of his blood as it gives her back her life.  
  
Furiosa’s eyes are strikingly green when she finally opens them for a moment, one only half visible under the swell of her lid. They blink around tiredly, meet his own eyes from across the interior of the cab for the expanse of two shared heartbeats, then slide closed again.  
  
Max is a bit dizzy by the time he barely feels the pinch of the needle being removed from his arm. He wants to protest, and he looks to Furiosa fearfully, but the Vuvalini woman hushes him comfortingly and presses a hand to his brow.  
  
“She’s alive, boy. She’s stable.”  
  
For a while, he sleeps.


	4. Chapter 4

He doesn’t want to wait for them to reject him, as he’s sure they would. He’s just a half-blood, just a pixie. He’s always hated the term. He’d only ever heard it spoken with contempt, and it never felt like it matched him.  
  
And even if they accepted a pixie into their group, he knows they’d never trust him. He’s sure he’s darkened. He’s got to be. All those years alone, all that insanity encroaching on his mind. It’s twisted his magic, what little of it he has, made him unstable, unsafe. He’s sure they’d find out, and then he’d be booted back out into the wastes to live his life alone again. He’d rather just leave on his own. It feels less painful that way.  
  
He shares a nod with Furiosa, an acknowledgement of trust and faith and thanks, and then he goes.  
  
He doesn’t make it far from the Citadel before he collapses. He’d fought hard, run himself ragged, and given more blood to Furiosa than was probably good for him. He’s barely holding himself at human size, and as he topples into the dust and loses consciousness, his body shrinks back down to his natural size.  
  
He had made it far enough out, thankfully, that even with the hubbub of activity stirred up at the base of the Citadel, nobody happens across him. It’s getting dark when he awakes, and he’s startled to see rocks he had stepped over tower like boulders around him. He scrambles over toward one and hides against it, looking up and around to make sure there’s nobody nearby. His wings twitch under his shirt. He steps out and looks the other direction too. There’s a person maybe 100 feet away, sitting on the edge of a small mound of earth with a hole in it - probably their home. They’re not close enough that Max feels at risk as he is, but he doesn’t feel like he can turn human without suddenly attracting attention.  
  
He hurries away, ducking behind rocks to stay out of sight until he’s far enough away and pops himself back to human size.  
  
Max isn’t particularly happy that he had passed out like he did - it could have ended very badly for him - but he had apparently needed it. It was probably the closest thing to proper sleep he’s had in awhile, and now that he feels at least somewhat rested, his mind is working more clearly. He looks out to the wastes where he was dead-set on heading, then down at himself. He has nothing on him but his clothing and the utility vest he had acquired when he took out the Bullet Farmer. The vest has munitions, mostly. Helpful, but not quite everything he needs to survive out there on his own. He looks back toward the Citadel. He needs to get something - supplies, or a car, or a bike - anything to get him out of here and back into the desert.  
  
His eyes climb the towers looming above. No, he can’t go back there. Between the attachment he had started to feel and the danger of Furiosa and the others finding out what he is, he can’t let himself get close again. He knows the chances of seeing her again right now are slim, but if he does, he thinks he might not want to leave again, and he has to leave. He looks next toward the horizon, where he can just barely make out the billowing smoke of Gastown’s towers in the fading light. There’s a city there, too. People. He could find something. He heaves a sigh and starts the long walk.  
  
He’s prepared to find work, or maybe even go back into the Thunderdome for the right prize. Anything to get a vehicle and some supplies and get away. He doesn’t know if the Thunderdome will still be running with the People Eater and the entirety of Gastown’s war party gone, but there’s a whole town there. Surely somebody will have some way he can earn enough for a bike and some supplies.  
  
He realizes when he gets there that he hasn’t eaten in two days and hasn’t drunk anything in nearly as long. He trades two of the magazines in his utility vest for a meal and a day’s ration of water, and gulps down nearly all of the water immediately. He knows he should have gotten more for what he offered, but the merchant insisted on a higher price for even that small quantity of water. Understandably, people are a little concerned about their water supply after their latest shipment from the Citadel went off road and the People Eater and his army went chasing off after it. Max doesn’t say a word about what has happened since then. If he’s lucky, he can get out of here before anybody finds out that the triumvirate of warlords are all dead and the inevitable riots ensue.  
  
Max is not lucky.  
  
He’s only just started trying to find work when the Citadel’s mirrors flash a message across the distance. He doesn’t see it himself, but it spreads like fire through the fume-rich city. People Eater dead. Immortan Joe dead. The new leaders of the Citadel are willing to keep up trade agreements.  
  
The promise of continued trade agreements seems to be largely missed by the masses in favor of the first two points. How can the Immortan be dead? And what is going to happen to Gastown without the People Eater? All chaos breaks loose.  
  
There is a great amount of shooting and screaming going on toward the center of the city, and around the areas where food and water are stored. Looting and thievery, Max would bet.  
  
Mostly people are hiding in their shacks, weapons ready to defend their lives.  
  
Max skirts through alleyways and tries to avoid roving bands. They’ll kill him for what ammo he has, do worse if they have the time to think about it.  
  
It’s not easy, and it’s not quick. He spends a quarter of an hour crouched behind a pile of rotting filth, the air stinking of sulfur from the wells nearby. Somewhere there’s a child screaming, more gunshots. Max isn’t entirely sure some of the sounds are real. What he is sure of, however, is that there is a vehicle sitting behind that fence ahead of him, completely unattended.  
  
It’s a patrol car, as far as he can tell. It has a perch on the front and one attached to the roof where there’s a large gun tilting emptily on its pivot. The damned thing is on blocks, but the rims and tires are there, he can just make out their shapes through the growing haze of smoke.  
  
He waits for a momentary calm in the chaos around him, vaults over the fence as quickly as he can, then keeps his body low as he approaches the car, trying to avoid attracting attention to himself. He finds the tools he needs, checks to make sure there’s air in the tires, and starts piecing the car back together. When it’s standing on its own four wheels, he checks over the engine. Everything looks in order. There are gunshots nearby, and he ducks behind the car before scrambling in, starting it up, and fanging it.  
  
The fence’s gate is closed, but it doesn’t look sturdy, and he’s attracted attention already. He bursts through it, barely slowing as people yell behind him, and he weaves his way through the streets, turning sharp corners to avoid gangs of people, and hoping he’s not going to run himself into a dead end. When he makes it to the road to the bridge out of Gastown, it’s clogged with other people trying to escape, and Max is forced to slow. He looks up at the guard towers on either side and is relieved to find them empty, the posts abandoned in favor of quelling the violence inside the city. He nudges his way through the hurrying people as quickly as he can, and once he’s past the bridge and the final set of guard towers, he slams his foot to the floor and disappears into the desert in a cloud of dust.  
  
After months of being held prisoner, and those few intense days of fighting for his freedom, then for a cause that was never really his own, returning to the open road and the freedom of his wandering lifestyle is a huge relief. He stops at the first town he finds far enough away from the madness of Joe’s old domain, and trades pieces off his car for things he needs. He trades the gun on top to one merchant for a few rifles, handguns, and ammo. For another merchant, he unbolts the perches, scrap metal in return for enough guzzoline to keep him going for a while, and at another stall, he picks out all the ammo from his utility vest that he doesn’t have weapons for, and exchanges them for as much food and water as he can get.  
  
He doesn’t think of her for three days. Too focused on driving and learning the… personality, of his stolen car. It’s not a smooth drive, but it’s solid. Aggressive. Eats up the desert like a starving beast when he presses his foot to the accelerator. The car cuts an imposing figure against the wastes. Sharp and ugly and dark under the layer of dust and grit.  
  
The interior isn’t comfortable; the seat is a steel basket with leather stuffed with scraps of cloth. By the third day his thighs and back and rear are sore and bruised and he finds himself thinking of the plush old world seats in the War Rig, the way they seemed to cradle his body, a strange comfort he hadn’t known for too long.  
  
He had let himself sleep there. Actually sleep, right next to somebody he had only met not 24 hours earlier. Admittedly, he had needed to sleep. He couldn’t risk going on longer and possibly losing the last of his strength. It doesn’t happen often, completely losing consciousness and waking up small and vulnerable. But as rare as it is, it is still terrifying.  
  
How close he’d come to exposing himself. All six inches and fragile whisper thin wings. So easily breakable inside and out.  
  
How Furiosa had looked at him, calm and gentle when he woke from a nightmare.  
  
_ Rest…  
  
_ Unknowing of what turmoil lived beneath his skin.  
  
He thinks of her for the first time hunched in the uncomfortable seat, staring up at the sky, a haze of mist in the distance, rolling like the dust cloud behind a great convoy. The stars are out, winking and blinking, and he thinks of the starlight on her wings as the glow of magic faded from them.  
  
Healed.  
  
Whole.  
  
The wonder and relief on her face, the hum of air as she’d fluttered them.  
  
It had gone through him like a bullet. A clench of his stomach in shock, fear, and relief.  
  
He’d become so used to being alone, the thought of being the last had driven him to darkness, he knows. Part of him can feel it, a sick ache in his core. But knowing that he wasn’t the last, that there were others, even after the loss of Angharad, made something inside him  _ hurt _ in a way he hadn’t felt in lifetimes. Ages. Worlds ago. Before the Great Purging, back when a warm hand curled at the back of his small skull and wings flicked in the edges of his vision. Large and dark blue with metallic stripes. Eyes like his own and a crooked smile encouraging him—  
  
Max feels his teeth pop as he clenches his jaws, nostrils flared to hold in any sound of discomfort.  
  
He doesn’t sleep, can’t. The hungry ache in his middle isn’t slaked by a strip of jerky, or a swallow of water.  
  
Four days more he fights the interior of the car and trades the passenger seat and a few baubles from the dashboard for more food and enough fuel to make it to the next, more developed town.  
  
A week’s labor for a tank of biofuel and two meals a day. If he is careful he can store half of each meal back, replenish his supplies.  
  
He crosses the fading path of a convoy two days later, four bikes and a car, traveling light. Heading north. He slows to a crawl, follows their tracks with his eyes until they meet the horizon and he imagines the distant dark smudge of Gastown. He knows it’s there. He feels something inside him drawing past it, toward green like a compass point.  
  
_ No _ .  
  
_ NO.  
  
_ He cuts the wheels away and stomps the accelerator.  
  
That night he dreams of eyes faded of color, Furiosa’s life bleeding out between his fingers, but instead of his own blood threading life back into her, her skin blackens and cracks as her magic burns out, body going stiff and ash colored. Her eyes open and they are withered and dead and her mouth opens in a scream that rattles behind his ribs and into the tips of his wings.  
  
He wakes with a cry echoing around the interior of the car, small and half tangled in the tattered seat covering, wings pinched painfully under his shirt. He’s plagued by nightmares all the time, but it is rare that a dream unsettles him so deep in his core that he loses hold of his human form. It takes more effort that he wants to admit to pop big again and his insides ache in a way that is somehow less and more than physical. His fingers are tingling and numb by turns, left hand throbbing where the steel rod had pierced it, the crook of his arm burning where the needle had sat.  
  
Whispers flow over the dunes around him like a breeze and he claps both hands over his ears, hunched low in the seat, and waits, barely breathing until morning.  
  
The sun burns red on the horizon as morning breaks and Max gauges the horizon against the length of his thumb, consults his map and watches clouds gathering to the east.  
  
Rain? Another dust storm?  
  
He has a few choices, skirt around hostile boundaries and go toward the curve of the mountains, or risk running into the ever-changing boundaries of scavengers, lands of steel spikes driven into the earth decorated with skulls and broken glass, of cars buried front first in the sand, charred and blackened by flame.  
  
It isn’t much of a choice. He can’t go much farther to the east, wouldn’t go north -  _ couldn’t _ —  
  
He mutters a curse and scans the horizon with a hand up to shield his eyes. He finds himself staring past the imagined fleck of black on the horizon. Something tugs below his heart and the phantom flash of too-green eyes opening in renewed life burns in his skull.  
  
__ No.  
  
NO.  
  
His hands shake and he points the wheels to the West and forces himself not to look back.


	5. Chapter 5

Night by night, the moon goes full and fades out to blackness again. 

Max drives. Skirts here and there, tries to avoid hostile territory and fails on occasion. A bullet hole in the fender, a hasty patch in his jacket, thread through his skin. Twelve bullets wasted, three raiders dead. 

He salvages what he can from their overturned dune runner. Fuel, half spilled, scant rations, bullets, guns, knives. Spark plugs, light bulbs. Anything useful. He rummages the dead men’s pockets, finds their bodies starved and sick. Rotting teeth and toxic water. 

It’s all a waste. 

All of it.

He still imagines he can see the smudge of Gastown on the horizon just as the moon has started peeling back again, a thin sliver like a razor blade in the night sky. The city is an amber speck of firelight and smog. His eyes tick to the left of it, trick him and say they can see the watch fires burning in the Citadel’s fonts. He tells himself he can hear the maniac guitarist playing for some celebration or another. A call to war, or a call of victory, he doesn’t know. It’s pointless. 

He dreams of her again. As he has every night, every rest he’s taken. Sometimes she comes to life before his eyes, shimmering skin and emerald eyes. Wings glistening like starlight. Others she’s black browed and roaring at him, swinging her fist and raging at him with her teeth bared and her eyes on fire. Others she withers and blackens like burning wood and falls to ashes in his arms, breath a wet rattle of collapsing lungs. 

He doesn’t know which is real, if any of them. 

She could be alive.

She could have died on the lift as he turned his back to her. 

She could have died days later of infection - fairies can’t heal when their magic is disrupted. She would have been practically human, wasting slowly as bacteria ate her from the inside out. 

His blood in her veins could have given her only a day, two - could have even caused more damage.

He doesn’t know and something inside him is dying for it. 

He can’t sleep, not really. Can’t think, or rest. He’s found himself nearly overtaken by raiders twice now because she has taken up residence in his mind. This  _ longing _ to know. To  _ see _ . 

It’s a thirst that can never be slaked, a hunger than can never be fulfilled. 

So, he turns his wheels and approaches from the Southwest. He travels nearly-sleepless nights until he loses count. He hides himself and his car on a hill overlooking the plains where the Citadel rests like a monument. He stays hidden in the foothills all day, lies on his belly with a cracked pair of binoculars he’d salvaged from one of the scavengers he’d fought off, and watches below. 

The Citadel is green, a gem. He fancies he can see the leaves moving on the trees, can smell something sweet and cool and green on the wind beneath the stink of Gastown. 

There is a rig. Different, trailing white banners with stripes or figures painted on them, he can’t tell from this distance, not with the cracked lens. It’s heading in the direction of the Bullet Farm. The tanker is different. Silver and black and prickled with pale figures. 

He can’t tell who’s driving. 

He wonders if the surviving members of the war party had come and wiped out all of the women, wonders if any of the Fae women had survived the battle more than the two from the warlord’s vehicle. 

He can’t  _ see _ . Can’t hear, can’t tell. 

He lies there all day and watches, ignores his thirst, ignores his hunger, but can’t ignore that burning  _ ache _ in his core.

If he can just get closer. If he can just  _ see _ , just  _ know _ , he’ll be okay. He can make himself leave if he just knows either way.

If she’s dead he will leave. If she’s alive and well, he will leave. He just needs to  _ know _ because he can’t shake the constant nag that he made a mistake in leaving. 

He’s seen the security patrols make their rounds around the Citadel, has mapped out their circuits, knows the extent of their boundaries. He moves before the sun sets, skirts around until he finds some rocky formations to the Northeast that will hide his car and give him a safe place to camp. He estimates it’s only an hour or two’s walk to the Citadel. A safe enough distance, he feels. He sets up camp, lays tarps for cover and a few traps around to deter scavengers, and settles down, fully prepared by now to dream of her.

In the morning he packs enough food and water in his utility vest for a few days, just in case, and watches through his broken binoculars again, does his best to time his walk to avoid the patrol cars, and then starts toward the Citadel.

He doesn’t want to stay. Doesn’t want to be seen. He just - just wants to  _ know _ . Wants to reassure himself, and the panic-inducing nightmares, that Furiosa is alive and healthy. He doesn’t want to think about if she’s not. 

He just has to know. 

It’s strange, of everyone he’s ever met or tried to help, she’s the only one who he felt overwhelmingly compelled to return to. Maybe it’s because she hadn’t pushed him. Hadn’t demanded anything from him, hadn’t  _ needed _ him, in a strict sense. Maybe it’s because she and her kin prove that he isn’t the last. Maybe it’s just his pathetic attempt to feel some kind of belonging again. 

Maybe it’s madness. More so than what he already knows plagues him. How could he not be insane, with everything he’s seen, done, and sees-that-isn’t-real.

He shakes himself out of his thoughts as he approaches the base of the Citadel and starts to weave his way through the people living there. He cranes his neck up to look at the towers around him. The tops look a little greener than they had when he left, and the three pipes that unleashed a cascade of water onto the people below have been replaced, more narrow pipes snaking their way down the rock face to tanks built on the ground. Small tendrils of green are just starting to climb out of the gaping mouth of the skull carved into the rock above the pipes.

Something in him settles a bit. This isn’t the information he came here for, but the place is changing, the old warrior king’s hold visibly released. The women he had helped must still be here, must have a hold on the place, must be the ones behind these changes. That doesn’t mean Furiosa is still alive, but his shoulders relax slightly at the thought that at least the others seem to be doing well.

He starts by just listening. A few people approach him, some broken, diseased, all their worldly belongings carried on their backs. Not everything can be fixed so quickly, he supposes. Some are strong and relatively healthy, likely people from outside, wanderers like himself or people from other cities who heard about the release of the Citadel from the tyrant’s grip. Some offer trades for something they see on him that they like, some flat out beg. One offers him work. He shakes his head and steers away from each. He considers asking for information, or trading for it if he must, but holds out and listens to the talk around him, trying to pick out words that could tell him about Furiosa. 

She was known to these people. He remembers calls of her name as she climbed out onto the hood of the car next to him. It’s more than likely that most people here would know if she were alive or not. But he’s cautious. A stranger asking such specific questions might get him the wrong sort of attention. Coming back here was risky enough, he’s not going to push his luck.

Hours pass, and nothing. He’s been here most of the day, has picked up a bit of information here and there, interspersed among the mundane talk of daily life and hardships. He’s learned that the women who run the Citadel now call themselves the Many Mothers, and he takes that as confirmation that the women he had turned back from the salt are indeed the ones leading the Citadel now. He had heard them speak that name out in the wastes.

The longer he goes without hearing anything about what became of Furiosa, though, the more a sinking feeling solidifies in his gut. No mention of her name, like she’s not here. She has died after all.

He shakes his head. He won’t believe it without proof. He’s not leaving yet.

He settles down on a large rock near the tower with the skull, trying to look occupied but still listening to an intense discussion nearby about the politics of the new agreements with Gastown and the Bullet Farm.

“Max?”

Max jumps, his hand going reflexively to the holster on his leg as his head snaps to the source of the voice. He doesn’t see the usual dead faces of his ghosts like he is expecting, but instead sees one of the Vuvalini standing in the crowd, looking straight at him. He stares disbelievingly for a minute, unsure if she’s real or in his head. She strides toward him and he’s suddenly afraid. The fear spikes higher when she reaches him and touches his arm. She’s real. He’s been found.

“You came back!” She smiles at him.

Max pulls his arm away from her hand and shakes his head. Coming here was a mistake. He should have stayed out in the wastes. “No,” he finds himself muttering, “no, no, no…” They’re going to find out what he is. It’s dangerous.  _ They _ are dangerous. They will hate and deny him just as the faces he can barely remember had. They’ll pin him down and pluck his wings off like the children had threatened when he’d been young. He was never welcome. Wasn’t accepted. Wasn’t pure. 

Darkened. Sullied.  _ Bug _ .

They would be no different.

He yanks his arm away from her attempt to reach out to him again, shoves himself off the rock, and stumbles away.

“Wait! Max!”

He tries to duck behind a group of people, tries to get lost in the crowd, but he can hear her behind him, still calling his name. He runs.

“Wait! I just want—”

He glances over his shoulder and sees people jostling and moving behind him as she tries to follow his path. When he looks forward again, the water tanks are near, and he hurries behind one, squeezing between it and the rock wall. He jams his foot in a crack in the wall a couple feet off the ground, then closes his eyes and lets himself shrink. With his heart racing in panic, he scrambles into the crack and tucks himself as far back as he can.

He hears her footsteps outside. They come to a sudden stop beside the water tank. “Max?” She stands for a long moment. He can’t see her, but he can imagine her scanning through the people around her. He holds his breath. After a minute, and without another word, she turns and leaves.

Max breathes again. He closes his eyes and leans his head against the rock beside it. That was too close. He can’t let them find him, can’t risk letting them find out what he is.

He hides for hours, so long the sun has shifted and long shadows are growing outside the little crack he’s forced himself into. People come and go from the water tanks. He closes his eyes and focuses on the glug of water being poured from the tanks, and the chatter of the people outside. Every time he considers moving, more people come around. 

His body aches. He hasn’t spent this long small in a while. Not willingly. Every so often he wakes up shrunken and vulnerable, but his body reflexively snaps back. 

Small is a bad thing. Small is a vulnerable, exposed thing. It’s dangerous! But what choice does he have?

There is a rumble, as the sun passes and the shadow of the Citadel begins to lengthen. A commotion as the valley dwellers start calling out excitedly and rush away from the great water tanks, toward the opposite tower. 

The rig has returned. 

Max weighs his options. It’s as good a distraction as he might ever get. He steels himself and finally climbs out of the little crack, and peers around wide eyed and wary to make sure no one is watching. 

There are people close, so close… too close to let himself grow again and see the rig for himself. From his vantage point peeking out from behind the tanks all he can see is the crowd and the flags on the rig as it moves slowly forward. 

Max mutters a curse and turns his head, scans the sheer face of rock above him. Man sized, he would be hard pressed to climb the tower without being seen. But small… 

Just to the top of the water tanks… then he should be able to see. 

But what if he falls? The distance isn't that great for a six foot man, but could be deadly to a six inch pixie. His pack could only make things worse. He wouldn’t have time to pull it off and get his wings out, little good though the stupid things may do him. He could maybe slow himself enough to hopefully prevent broken bones, if he could get them out. 

But still, fear eats at his insides. What if he’s seen? 

The rig makes it to the garages, the people around it chanting.

Max snarls at himself, strips off his pack and jacket and pulls his shirt off. He stuffs his shirt into the pack, tangles his jacket hastily around one of the straps and fiddles with the straps of the pack until he finds a way to attach it around his waist. He knows if he falls with this much weight on him he’ll have little chance of keeping himself airborne, but he figures he can drop the pack if he has to. At least this way he can use his wings before he hits the ground.

He turns to the wall, looks up at it with a sigh, and begins to climb.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time he reaches the top of the water tanks the rig is already turned and backed into the space under the lift, hidden in shadows. He can only make out the vague shapes of people working to unload the supplies, shadows without faces. 

His arms shake and he contemplates just letting go and fluttering to the ground, and leaving under cover of darkness. He feels more exposed now than he has in ages, more than when he'd been captured and stripped, more than when he'd been tattooed, more than when he'd been a child and laughed at for having the audacity to think the other Fae children would accept him if he only had color in his wings. 

It was a mistake to come here, and he turns to peer down between his feet and begin his descent, but pauses. He came here to find out about Furiosa, and if he leaves now, he’ll never know. He cranes his head up to look at the seemingly endless expanse of rock above him and sighs. If she’s anywhere, she’d be up there. He doesn’t know how he’d find her, but a whispering voice in the back of his head tells him to keep going. He looks down again. People are filtering away from where they had gathered to greet the rig, and are starting to fill the space around the water tanks again.

Max stares down at them, back and arms and hands screaming at the strain of his climb. He bumps his head despondently against the stone before him. It’s too risky to turn back now anyway. He has to climb. He has to know.

Three feet, five feet, ten. His fingers are split and scraped and bleeding. He finds a miniscule ledge and pauses, body shaking. He swallows a few mouthfuls of water and tears useless ragged bits of nail and skin away from his fingertips. He mutters and presses the pain to his lips, hoping to dull it. 

Another ten, maybe twelve feet and he finds a crack large enough to sit in, and crawls into it for a moment of rest. He lays panting on his face in the darkness for a long while, arms and legs cramping.

He doesn’t want to make himself get up. Maybe he should just spend the night here. But he worries that if he doesn’t get up higher, somebody might spot him when daylight arrives. He lays on his belly and chews half heartedly on a strip of dried meat as he rests.

He lets a couple hours pass, then finally pushes himself stiffly to his feet. He curses, half to himself, half to the stone around him, then eyes the heights above him for signs of another crack or outcropping. He spots one barely four feet above him. 

_ Come on, COME ON _ , he growls to himself. Gritting his teeth, he starts up. 

Less than a second after he rolls onto the next ledge, deciding to stay here for another while, maybe the whole night or the rest of his life, he catches a strange movement from the edge of his eye, something large and dark hidden away in the large crack he'd discovered. 

He lifts his head, brain screaming  _ snake _ ! But what greets him is not a snake. 

A raven steps out into the dim light of the night and cocks its head, making a single low rasping noise, and lifts its feathers in interest as it peers at Max. 

Max has just enough time to lift himself up to a sitting position and swing his feet toward the bird defensively with a startled snarl before it strikes. It takes what feels like his entire leg in its beak and twists like it wishes to dismember him. 

He thinks for sure it has for an instant, but kicks at the bird’s beak with his other leg until the bitten one comes free. He throws out his wings as he topples backward off the ledge with a shriek. 

He falls, twists mid air and sees the bird follow in a flurry of feathers. He pinwheels his arms, wings beating frantically, and manages to crash into the stone of the citadel with his feet, hands scrabbling as he slides back down to the lower ledge with a small thud. 

The raven gurgles again as it approaches, and Max launches himself head first into the tiny crack he'd rested in, and kicks uselessly at the bird's beak as it tries to snap at him again. Thankfully the crack’s opening is too small. For a terrifying few moments the bird’s head is stuck, and it screeches and fights to free itself while Max covers his ears and tries to stay out of its reach. 

Then, miraculously, it rips free, leaving behind a few feathers and scratches in the earth. With an indignant croak, it flaps away.

Max doesn’t move for a long while, afraid and hurt. He gingerly presses a palm to his leg and is relieved there’s no blood, but the muscle and abused skin scream at the slightest touch. He thinks it might have been worse without the metal of his brace protecting his leg, but he’s not going anywhere on it tonight. He sits against the back of the crack and pulls his knees to his chest and his wings in close.

“Great…” He lets his head thump against the stone.

He dozes a little for the next few hours, but doesn’t let himself sleep fully, afraid that he’ll wake up disoriented and snap himself reflexively back to human size. He can feel an ache behind his eyes when the sky finally lightens outside of his hiding place.

He should turn back. He should make it to the ground before the people below start to wake, and he should just limp away. He sets his jaw and starts to scoot out of the crack. But as he sits with his legs overhanging the edge, peering down at the tanks below him, he can’t. He came here for a reason. He tests his bitten leg, flexing it a few times, and turns to look up at the expanse above him. He’s not giving up yet.

With a deep breath, he pushes himself to his feet, finds his leg doesn’t hurt as badly as he had expected, and he starts the climb again.

He ducks into cracks and ledges whenever possible, resting his burning muscles and trying to plan the best path up. Bit by bit, foot by foot, he makes it up the wall. He jogs to the side, toward the water pipes running down the wall, and sticks to the spaces behind the pipes as much as he can, using them for cover from both birds and the beating sun. It still gets hot, and he stops on occasion when the wall and the pipes are close to each other, and rests his back against the cool metal, freeing his hands to wipe sweat from this face.

No birds spot him, to his relief, though he does scare a lizard from its cool hiding spot behind one of the pipes, and nearly scares himself off the wall in the process. It’s a small lizard, thankfully, only about as long as Max is tall. Not big enough to eat him. He still watches it warily as he climbs on up and away from it.

He hesitates when he reaches the end of the pipes, but from here he can see the carved skull and the green starting to grow from it. Just a little farther.

He hoists himself up to the final ledge, between two of the monstrous teeth, and halts his inevitable collapse just long enough to make sure there’s nobody inside. It’s dark and damp, but quiet, and he sees no movement. He flops onto the flat shelf of stone before him and lies panting in relief.

He stares up at the expanse of rock above him, past the upper teeth of the skull and groans. He should keep climbing, should stay outside of the Citadel to avoid being caught by anyone, but he almost feels sick at the thought of climbing another inch. His arms ache, his fingers and palms are bleeding. He sighs and lifts his head to look back into the room behind the skull. He’ll take his chances inside.

When he finally does manage to drag himself up and drop down to the floor inside, he crouches low and pops himself to human size. He quickly retreats into the shadows near the back of the room, and puts his shirt, jacket, and tactical vest back on. He locates the exit and sneaks into the hallway.

Max moves slowly, keeping his ears alert for any sound of approach. The hallways are largely empty at first, and he winds this way and that, selecting the upward paths whenever he has the option. He reaches a point, however, where the passageways become more busy. He avoids a few people by ducking down a side passageway and hiding in the shadows, but when he finds himself in a long, unbranching tunnel with people approaching, he presses himself to the wall and looks around in desperation. No place to hide.

Unless…

There are two pipes running along the wall near the floor. He closes his eyes and lets himself shrink, then clambers over one of the pipes and hides between the two of them. He holds his breath as the people pass. They walk past without the slightest notice of him, and after a minute, he braves coming out and growing back to human size.

He continues this way, shrinking down and finding some place to hide every time he encounters someone, never knowing if it will be someone who could recognize him.

Eventually the passageway makes a sharp turn to the left and opens up to become a room of sorts with a cage at the far end, inside of which are long steel cables going up and down an echoing shaft. Its edges are stacked with an assortment of large and small crates. Tools, rags, dusty aprons and bags fill the space. There’s a clear path through the center of the room where people have walked, but very few of the crates and boxes and buckets of things Max is too wary to look at seem to be touched.

There’s a smell about the room as well. It’s wetter, earthier than the rest of the tunnel, and when Max approaches and peers upward he sees shafts of light cutting through holes in the tunnel roof, pinpoints of sunlight accompanied by the distant sound of movement.

He blinks around the corner cautiously, then back down the corridor from whence he’s come. There are voices behind him. Distant, but his hearing is good enough that he can pick out the tone, if not the individual words.

The room is the only place the people could be going, and the only place he has left to hide. He shrinks himself as quickly as aching muscles and waning energy allows, and scurries between some stacked crates. He wedges himself as tightly back as he can and finds a crack in an old metal box with a bit of fabric sticking out. He doesn’t think twice before wedging himself through the crack and into the darkness of the box.

It’s warm inside, and nearly pitch black save for the few rust holes in the lid that let in anemic light. The box seems to be filled with sacks of some kind, and a few old seed hulls. It smells earthy and healthy in a way most of the dirt and soil he’s encountered hasn’t since he was a child. The voices grow louder, chuckling at a joke or a tale, and Max crouches inside the crack to listen.

He hears the footsteps of two people enter, and he holds his breath. They walk past him, and he lets it out again, quietly. When they reach the back of the room, one shouts, making Max jump.

“Come on! Let us up!” There’s a loud banging followed by an ominous creaking, groaning sound.

After a moment there’s a screeching noise, and through the cracks in the box he’s hiding in, Max sees a flare of light from above, like someone’s thrust open a door. 

“Lookit this!” A deep voice echoes down the shaft in the room. “Piglet and the Wingnut Saint’ve decided to finally join us. You’re runnin’ late, lads, they’ve started without you. Grab some gear and get on it!”

The noise that comes next is mechanical, an engine firing up, and shadows shift across the holes in the box.

It’s a lift, Max realizes, and blinks blearily at the light and tries to guess what time of day it is. How long had he rested in the space between the skull’s teeth?

Footsteps come nearer and he can hear the two boys begin rummaging in the crates near the lift. One mutters, “can’t find nothin’ in this mess! How do the greenthumbs do it!”

“Come on, just grab a can and let’s go!”

“You don’t use a can to pull grapes!”

“Harvest - HAR-VEST!” Through the top of the box Max catches a glimpse of a boy with a stripe of hair braided back from his brow - Piglet, Max guesses randomly. He tosses something at the other and dawns an apron himself. The lift rattles to a stop in the room.

“What’s this?” The other - Wingnut - sniffs loudly, then laughs hysterically. “Smells like piss!” 

Footsteps retreat away from Max, and he finally starts to relax a bit. He listens as the lift ascends, and waits until the noise has stopped with a creak before he moves. He scurries out of the box he was hiding in and toward the lift cage, creeps forward and grips one of the bars with both hands. For a moment, he feels an inexplicable urge to fling himself off into the abyss.

For long stretches the shaft is just a tube through solid stone, but every so often there is another landing, a lit spot going down, down, down. How long could he flutter about down there? Where would he wind up? Or would he wind up at the bottom of a hole unable to climb out again?

...Were there snakes down there?

He’s so busy wondering and staring dazedly that he doesn’t hear the voices until they’re too close.

Lots of voices. Children’s voices. 

Max’s breath is frozen in his lungs. He can’t be found. Not like this. Not by children. They’ll treat him like a toy, or a pet - or worse, tear his wings off. Childhood nightmares fly through his head, and he flings himself toward the nearest crate, scrambling to get out of sight before it’s too late.


	7. Chapter 7

The first pup rounds the corner before Max fully conceals himself, and he hears one cry out in delight: “A rat!”

Two more voices echo, and there’s a scurry of quick feet. Max shoves himself between crates, his heart in his neck. He’s been  _ seen _ !

He flings himself to and fro between the crates, in through the gaps of this one, then out again, heading deeper because the pups are digging after him and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s the tenacity of a war pup. He remembers the grabby little one who’d been there as he was being processed for the Blood Shed. The kid would have snatched the hair from his very head given the chance, and Max knows it. He feels it in his bones: kids like this - human children who don’t know any better - or perhaps who do but wish to inflict pain - were the kinds of humans to snatch a pixie’s wings off if they saw them.

He twists and forces himself through a too-small gap and into an overturned crate wedged against the wall. It’s full of old, torn sacks and spools of dusty thread. Max accidentally knocks one out of the crate in his haste to conceal himself, and watches it roll away toward the grabby hands poking through every space available.

“Hey! What are you doing?” A voice - a woman’s voice, commanding and shrewd. “You pups’re supposed to be helping out up top.”

Max’s heart beats a little faster. The voice is familiar, but it’s not the one he’d hoped for. He can’t see her, but he recognizes Toast’s voice, and pictures her standing there with a hand on her hip and a twig between her teeth.

“Come on, hop to it!” She claps her hands, chants: “let’s go! Let’s go!” commandingly, and Max feels the stack of crates around him shift, hears little voices speaking at once.

“There’s a rat! We gotta catch it!”

“Yeah, it’ll eat all the seeds and spoil the crops!”

“Rats gotta eat too, everything’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but we’re gonna eat it”

“Yeah, rat soup!”

“RAT SOUP!”

“Okay, okay!” Toast sighs. “We’ll set a trap for it. Mean time, get goin’. Last pup in the cabbage patch is a leaky gasket!”

There is a thunderous cheer and crates overturn, hands grabbing sacks and aprons and cutting implements.

Max’s crate is knocked spinning and he clings to the rough material around him desperately, sees the backs of a few pups’ heads as the crate settles, and suddenly the crate is moving again - suddenly airborne and tucked roughly to Toast’s middle.

Max wriggles frantically and hides in one of the bags. A spool of thread shifts and bangs into his head. He freezes, holds perfectly still and forces himself to calm. Vigilance. He has to escape. Maybe he can slip out of the crate and into the lift shaft…

Maybe he can pretend to be a rat - scare Toast into dropping the crate... No - It’s unlikely she’s afraid of rats. From her reaction she’s probably had her share of rat soup as well.

_ Think, Max, THINK! _

The lift clanks and groans and the pups are crowded close with their garden tools raised like they’re going to war against weeds and parasites. Through a slat in the crate, Max sees their little faces, far too grim and serious, considering they’re all under seven years if Max’s guess is correct. 

But how is he going to get out of the crate?

He practically vibrates and feels the urge to just  _ pop _ big again and run. It’s almost overwhelming. He has to grind his teeth and  _ force _ himself to stay small to keep it from happening.

By the time the lift reaches the top he’s sweating, shaking and nauseated from the effort. His bones  _ ache _ . 

The pups give a battle cry of “CABBAGE!” as they flood off the lift and run at the rows of blinding green in front of them. There are some larger women milling about here and there in wide hats, some with babies strapped to their backs and others herding pups or young war boys to and fro.

Toast walks up to one near the rows of cabbage and the crate shakes as she hands it over. Max thinks he may become motion sick if all the jostling doesn’t stop. “These’ll need repair - now where’s that winch you were–”

Suddenly, Max feels a hand close over him, squeeze just enough to feel the living softness of his ribs and belly and pull a crushed grunt from his lips before the large woman’s hand retracts, the crate becomes weightless, and max tumbles out amid the tangle of torn sacks into a leafy pile of greens.

“RAT!” The woman shrieks, and dances excitedly away as every head turns.

“RAAAT!” The pups jump toward the pile of sacks and Max feels a scream building in his throat. He thrashes, grabs handfuls of fabric and tears his way free. He tumbles out and runs, dodges around plump cabbage heads and green infant gourds. He doesn’t really look behind him but runs as if he is in plain sight. His wings are pressed tight to his back and his pack snags on leaves and stalks. He vaults over a small pumpkin just starting to go orange in its creases, tumbles down a sudden dip in the earth and slides shoulders-deep into a pile of pulled weeds and clippings. It takes a moment to right himself, and he takes a quick frantic look around before he lunges for the first cover he sees, an overturned watering can with a large hole in the bottom. It seems to have been forgotten where it’s lying near the bottom of the watchtower, hidden behind a pile of rocks. He presses his palms to the hot metal and wedges himself as far into the spout as he can, knees pulled to his chin, fighting for breath.

“Careful! CAREFUL!” The cucumber!”

“Mind the bees, boys!” An older man shouts.

The pups are still calling “Rat! Rat! Rat!” excitedly. But, it seems, Max has escaped them.

He chuckles wearily despite himself, wants in some weird way to curl up and cry. He hadn’t wanted this. He had never wanted this… He just wants to  _ know _ . To  _ see _ that Furiosa is okay. That is all.

_ Is it worth it? _ A little nagging voice in the back of his head hisses. _ You’ll get yourself killed! _

He pulls an arm over his face and lays there for a long while, trembling with nerves.

Eventually the pups are herded back to the cabbage and things go relatively quiet as the sun sinks lower toward the horizon. Max doesn’t move. He feels hollow and sick from hunger and thirst, but doesn’t have the strength or will to feed himself or drink.

He’s too afraid that any movement, any breath loud enough to echo in the can would alert them to his presence.

The guard changes. Max hears a few muffled words exchanged, hears a bell ringing on the valley floor and the air around him becomes hushed and dark as night falls.

Max waits until he can’t see his hand in front of his face before he climbs out of the watering can and slinks despondently toward the edge of the cliff. He clings to the still-hot leg of the watch tower and peers up at the lone lamp and the person on the perch with their spyglass.

They’re too busy scanning the horizons to pay any attention to a ‘rat’... or a bug.

Stupid... He’d been so stupid.

His hands are stiff, swollen from so long climbing, his fingers don’t want to bend as he eases forward on all fours and peers over the ledge. He isn’t on the same side of the tower as the water pipes this time… Unless he wants to brave going inside again - not likely - he would have to climb down an unfamiliar path.

He sighs, exhausted.

So stupid.

Stupid little bug.

Movement from the edge of his vision catches his attention. There’s light where there was darkness before... A lamp is lit.

He stares.

There, below him to the left, is a glass cage of another kind. A dome, under which flowers and green grow wild.

He can just make out figures moving about beneath the dome, mingling, interacting. It looks like they’re setting up for some sort of celebration or event. And then… one by one, they just… disappear. He stares, disbelieving, but at the same time his wings twitch beneath his shirt and he knows exactly what has just happened. They were the fairies, shrinking down to their natural size, now small enough that he can’t see them from this distance. They’re probably the same ones he had met on the Fury Road. Furiosa’s people. And with them, he would bet, is Furiosa. If she’s still alive.

Part of him fights against getting any closer, a voice in his head growling at him about the dangers of being found out. He should leave. He should just turn around and climb back down to the ground. But another part still aches, needs to see, needs to find out for himself if she’s alive.

It’s a sheer drop below him, but there’s a sizable ledge on which the dome sits. His hands scream against the very idea of climbing more. He glances over his shoulder, as if the worry of someone about to see him do something incredibly stupid is of any concern right now. It’s a large enough ledge that quite a few humans could stand on it comfortably. A big enough target that he shouldn’t have any trouble hitting it at this size. He takes off his pack, his jacket, and then his shirt, then secures the clothing tightly to the pack. 

Reluctantly, he reaches out as far as he dares over the ledge, and drops the bundle. He sees it grow back to its normal size after it leaves his hand, and he curses quietly. He had forgotten about that. He had spent so little time fairy-sized since he was a child, that the fact that fairy magic no longer works on shrunken things once they leave the Fae’s person had completely faded from his mind. He peers down with apprehension as it falls and falls and falls, seemingly endlessly. Then, finally, it hits the flat surface of the ledge with a faint thud, and he prays that nobody heard that. He glances up at the guard post above him, but sees no movement. He turns his attention back to the dome, but if any of them heard it, he can’t see them well enough to tell.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, his stomach clenches and twists, and his wings flutter nervously in the air. Is he really going to do this? Is he willing to be so foolish over just needing to see that someone’s alive? He remembers her calling him Fool, and he smiles a bit despite himself. Perhaps he is just that.

He’s never been a good flier, but he can at least stop himself from a deadly fall, at least when he’s not carrying too much weight on him. His wings start beating hard, harder, frantically. Holding his breath, he takes the step.

He falls.

He holds in a scream of terror, but only barely, and only by biting down hard on his lip. He flails in the air, trying to right himself as he spins out of control, his wings beating furiously to try to slow his fall. They’re weak from years of disuse. He shouldn’t have even tried. He’s such a fool.

His eyes are clamped shut; he’s sure he’s going to hit the ground and die, but he keeps trying, focusing as much of his attention as he can on beating his wings and willing his weak lift magic to save him. Finally he feels the rush of air flowing past him slow a bit, and he opens his eyes and looks down. He’s still a considerable distance from the ledge, and he’s going fast enough that he’s sure the landing will be the end of him, but he still has time. He flaps yet harder, slows his fall bit by agonizing bit.

He’s still going down faster than he’s comfortable with by the time he reaches the ground, and he pushes himself forward at the last second, rolling as he hits the ledge, tucking his wings tight against his back to protect them as best he can. His legs scream out in pain from the brief impact, and after he tumbles to a stop, he simply lies on the ground, taking air in heaving breaths. Slowly the pain fades, and he pushes himself to his feet. He looks around. He made it. He actually made it.

He searches for his pack first, and finds it not far from the wall only thanks to the light filtering out of the dome. It towers over him like a large hill and he growls quietly at himself. Stupid. There’s only one way to retrieve it now. Crouching low, he pops quickly back to human size, grabs the pack, and shrinks again. He’s much less likely to be seen at Fae size, and he plans to stay that way until he’s far away from anyone who could recognize him. He dons his clothes quickly. The heat in his muscles built up from so much effort flying is fading fast in the cool night air. 

He walks cautiously toward the dome as he finishes adjusting his pack on his back. He can’t see anything through the tangle of plants growing along the inside of the glass wall, and so he feels confident that they won’t be able to see him either. Slowly he sneaks nearer, until he can touch the cold glass wall in front of him, and his ears can just barely pick up on the sound of soft yet lively music. Fairy music, he assumes. It’s vaguely familiar in style, though he doesn’t know the song. He follows along the wall until he finds a gap in the plants, then peeks through carefully. He jumps back almost immediately.

There, not far from where he stands, at the base of a set of stairs, is the group of fairies.

Holding his breath as if they might be able to hear him, he carefully peeks past the leaf he’s partially hiding behind. At a quick glance, there are maybe ten at most, and he stares in amazement. A few months ago he had never expected to see another Fae in his life, but now here he is, seeing an entire group of them, not hiding as humans but openly showing their wings and indulging in the culture of their people.

A few are dancing, some are drinking, and most are just mingling, talking, and laughing. Most of them are the older women that had fought alongside them on the way back to the Citadel. Most had been lost in the battle, but apparently that wasn’t enough to kill fairies this old and strong. He’s a little shocked, though, when he spots the six brilliant wings of Angharad, the very wings that had burned into his mind when he first discovered that he wasn’t alone after all. He knew she could have still been alive, but he’s still surprised to see her here. 

As he scans over the small group, he stops suddenly. Furiosa. Her back is to him, but she’s unmistakable. Those beautiful, shimmering dragonfly-like wings. The neatly-shorn hair. The solid strength of her posture. Something in him uncoils and relaxes, a great tension releasing in his mind. She’s alive. She’s okay. He hadn’t killed her with that blade and his blood after all.

He watches, but after a minute she turns her head and looks over her shoulder, and Max ducks back out of sight as her gaze passes over where he’s crouched. He didn’t come here to let any of them find him, he only came here to ease his own fears. And now he knows, so now he can leave. 

But he doesn’t. He gives it a minute to make sure Furiosa doesn’t see him, but then finds himself peering back in the window. He hasn’t seen fairies, much less fairy culture in so long. He finds himself oddly drawn to it, fascinated by it. Fond, nearly forgotten memories of his childhood bubble back up, and he can’t seem to tear himself away. Eventually he seats himself on the ground where he can still look between leaves, and watches wistfully as the fairies in front of him celebrate.


	8. Chapter 8

The party dies down and Max is still there. He got lost in the past, and he growls at himself for his stupidity. He barely even wants to admit that he longs for it, for the connection to others of his kind, for a sense of belonging. He knows he can’t have such things. They are fairies and he is a pixie. He’d simply be ridiculed, or at least never fully respected. Plus, he’s got to be darkened by now. He doesn’t know how to tell if he is, but he’s sure they could tell once they knew him. They’d never trust him. He’s too dangerous. Too unclean.

Stupid  _ bug _ .

He turns his back as the fairies start to leave and he retreats to the edge of the ledge away from the dome. Time to leave. He sits down on the edge of the cliff and looks down. He’s not quite sure how to get back to the ground. Trying to fly was almost the end of him, and his hands still ache and throb from his climb.

He doesn’t even realize he’s gotten lost in thought again until the sun starts to rise and he blinks back to the present. The party couldn’t have lasted that long into the night. How much time has he wasted, sitting here thinking about the fairies? Mumbling curses to himself, he pushes himself to his feet and stomps away from the ledge. He doesn’t feel safe trying to get down in the daylight. Not without pipes to hide under and to help keep him from falling. If he has to drop his pack and try to fly again on the way down, he’d much rather do it at night when he’d be less likely to catch everyone’s attention doing so. Also, he’s exhausted. He hasn’t truly slept in a couple days, and it’s starting to wear on him.

He walks along the back of the ledge, examining cracks and hollows he might be able to hide in, but stops himself just before crawling into one. If he’s going to let himself sleep here, he can’t be sure he won’t wake up human sized, and he doesn’t particularly want to crush himself to death by growing large inside a tiny crack in the rock.

Finally he finds a spot at the far edge of the rock shelf, away from the dome, where the curve of the rock hides him from sight, and he settles down. He digs in his pack and pulls out some jerky and water, takes a few sips to push back the thirst that he realizes now had grown desperate as he sat lost in thought, and he chews slowly on the piece of jerky. Eventually he lies down and tries to make himself as comfortable as he can on bare stone, and finally lets himself drift off to sleep.

He doesn’t know where they’re going. 

Mom is driving the car, she’s young - younger than Max really remembers seeing her. No gray, whisper thin hair and hollow eyes. She’s smiling, bright and full and  _ alive _ , and beside her on the front bench is—

Max can’t remember his face, not really. He has the impression of a face, but it changes, morphs and shifts between his own and indecipherable features. A nose, a smiling mouth, eyes like his own - brighter,  _ shining _ . 

Mom has the radio playing, but it’s low and quiet and Max can’t tell what it is. It’s not important though. Not really. Just this - Max staring out the car window watching the electric power lines going by in the car’s headlights, thinking they look like fishing lines, dangling from heights unimaginable. It’s a strange thing to remember so vividly when he can’t even be sure the face he’s putting on his father’s body is true. 

He doesn’t know where they’re going. 

The car smells vaguely of mud and decaying leaves. 

He’s young. Still small, soft and wide eyed. It seems impossible for some reason, but it fades, and he’s sitting there in his pyjamas and rain boots, kicking gently and picking at the cuff of his jacket and the bite of the car’s safety belt into his lap.

Mom says something softly and his father chuckles - warm and low, and it sparks something in Max’s chest, a fragile wisp of excitement mixed with joy.

“Where are we going?”

Mom smiles and looks at Dad, bites her lip in withheld excitement. She says nothing.

Dad turns in his seat and grabs Max’s knee playfully, gives him a little shake and a tickle until Max feels a tight curl in his chest.

“It’s special,” Dad says with a wink. “This is a Salutation… A Welcoming, just for you.”

“Welcoming?” Max cocks up an eyebrow, just like Mom does sometimes when Dad sits on her vanity mirror and flicks the light on and off, or takes Max up into the fern hanging on the porch to hide and watch the birds nesting in the shrubs. “But I’m already here!”

Mom snorts a laugh.

“You’ll see,” Dad winks at him again, gives his knee one more tickle.

They drive for a long while, Max dozes off to the soft sound of his parents voices whispering, the warmth in the car around him, and the shimmer of the night sky and powerlines out his window. Time is ephemeral, moves fluid-like from one action and feeling to another. When they stop they’re on the edge of an evergreen forest. Max can smell the ocean in the air. 

“Where are we?”

“Auntie Mae’s,” Dad says gently.

“Who’s that?”

Dad just smiles.

There are a few other cars parked near enough Max can see them in the dark, but not close enough that he can pick out details about them. They’re strange shapes beyond the reach of the headlights. Dad crouches in front of him, smiles and helps him tug off his shirt and boots, laughs softly when Max wiggles his toes in the shed pine needles, then leads him by the hand deeper into the grove. 

It’s dark on all sides, save the gentle beam of the light Mom is carrying some distance back from them. But through the trees Max hears laughter like bells. Like water trickling - he sees soft flutters of light in a rainbow of different colors, some large some small and perched in the branches of a gnarled old tree.

It’s gigantic, bigger than any of the other trees surrounding it, the trunk impossibly round and gnarled, covered in moss and miniscule little flowers. There are bird houses hanging in almost every limb, old, beautifully decorated. A small cook fire is burning nearby, and an old woman in an earthy green tunic is sitting over it, hair twisted into an intricate knot on her head, speckled with flowers and tiny shining stones. 

Max thinks strangely, that she looks like a queen, one of the witch queens from old stories his mother tells him. He hides behind his father’s leg at first, until the woman smiles and speaks his name with a gentle voice. 

“Hello, Max.”

Dad ruffles his hair, tickles the side of his neck playfully until that tight little curl in Max’s chest unwinds and his body tingles, wings flicking out, antennae lifting. But that’s bad isn’t it? Dad always said to keep it hidden!

He ducks behind his father completely.

The old woman’s eyes shine and her smile widens. When she speaks his name a second time it’s different, rings in the air like starlight. “Hello, Max.”

He feels it’s different now, something feels different. He peeks out slowly at the woman, blinks owlishly as she dips her head to the side and motions him forward. 

Dad crouches at his side, cups his face in big warm hands, his smile so wide Max could never forget it, or how it pulls the edges of his lips up, the little crinkles at the edges of his eyes. Pride, love - acceptance. 

“It’s alright, see? Look!” He motions toward the edge of the clearing the big tree is in.

There are others. Children, adults, people who insist on being called ‘grandma’ or ‘grandpa’. They approach slowly, kneel and say “Hello, Max!” with such joy in their faces. 

Dad whispers to him sometimes, “this is Dianne,” or “this is Mick,” with a laugh, “this is Auntie Bill.” And Max whispers their names with the same reverence they gave his.

“Hello, Dianne… Hello, Mick… Hello Auntie Bill.”

They smile and dance together in circles around the tree and the fire and sing, fly,  _ shine _ .

The moon is a fat coin above them. Blue and silver and loving. 

The children are all different. One or two like Max himself, winged and able to shift their forms. Some are in between, the skin of their backs freckled with shimmering stars in swirling patterns, but no wings come forth. 

The old woman kneels with each of them in turn under the naked boughs of the great tree and gives them each a small, golden brown, sticky cake. She paints their hands and arms with swirls and letters that Max can’t really understand, and she places a crown of wildflowers on each of their heads and lifts them into the air with wizened old hands stronger than steel and more gentle than goose down. 

Max looks around, face pink and grinning and sore. Dianne’s hand in his left, a young boy named Wes to his right, running full tilt through arches formed by parents’ raised hands, laughing and cheering, the flash of fairy wings in the moonlight and the taste of honey on his tongue. The warmth of his mother’s arms and father’s smile and the joy in the Fae faces around him. 

The colors swirl together, gold and silver and blue, purple, grass green, and spring wildflowers in the middle of autumn. The joy in his chest rises - his heart beats in time to the sound of wingbeats.

“Max—“

He wakes in the heat of the day, covered in sweat, and for a moment he doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know if he’s big or small, doesn’t know what’s dream and what’s reality. He pushes himself up quickly and looks around. Desolate. Dead. Empty.  _ This _ is reality, the world after the end. No happy times with family, no warmth, nobody welcoming him. It’s all gone.

He feels pebbles rough beneath his hands, sees the ledge relatively flat before him, not as hills and mountains of uneven rock, but as an easily-traversable shelf. He’s human sized again. He shudders and takes in a shaking breath as fading memories seep through him, then pushes himself up to sitting and fumbles his pack off and digs for his water, his mouth feeling impossibly dry.

He reverts back to Fae form after he has had a chance to calm himself, a chance to try to let the memories go again. He doesn’t approach the dome. He doesn’t want to risk being seen in the daylight. Instead he stays on the far side of the ledge. He paces, walks circles, heads to the edge and looks down only to turn around and hike back to the wall. He needs to leave, but he doesn’t know how to get down. Or so he tells himself. 

Every time the memories trickle back up he tries to push them away. He can’t have that anymore. It’s dead and gone. He lost that privilege the day his father died, and he only got further and further removed from Fae kind after that. He needs to go. There’s no place for him here.

And yet he doesn’t go. The rest of the day passes and night falls and again light filters out of the dome. He approaches cautiously. The women are not in fairy form this time, but they still show their antennae and wings freely. They sit around talking amongst themselves, and this time the other four women that Furiosa had stolen away are part of the group. His sensitive ears pick up on voices and laughter, but not specific words. He sits again and watches in silence.

They’re so carefree and confident with what they are, a luxury Max hasn’t been able to afford for the vast majority of his life. His chest aches with envy. He doesn’t remember ever being proud of what he is. It’s been nothing but shame since he was old enough to understand that neither humanity nor Fae kind would ever fully accept a half-breed. His father and mother had kept him protected, surrounded by only those who accepted what he was and didn’t judge him for it when he was younger, up until his father died. His mother tried to send him to a Fae school after that, but it didn’t turn out well. His half-breed nature wasn’t as well-received as it had been among his father’s friends. In the end, she had no other option but to raise Max as a human, and from that point on, he had always hidden what he was.

He keeps staring into the dome even after the women have left and the lights are extinguished. He still fights against the fact that he longs to be among them, but the feeling is slowly becoming undeniable. With an angry grumble, he finally stands up and treks back to the other side of the ledge. He’ll make himself leave after a brief rest. Nothing good will come of staying here any longer.

He wakes a few times in the night, and each time finds he has reflexively snapped himself back into human form. After the third time, he gives up on trying to sleep, worried that someone might see him at human size, even in the darkness of the night.

He eats his dwindling rations quickly before heading out to the edge, determined to make the climb down. His hands are still covered in cuts from the climb up, but they’re no longer swollen and aching, and he feels he no longer has an excuse to avoid climbing again. He stares down at the expanse of rock below him, but finds his eyes drifting back toward the dome.

He curses at himself.

He wants to leave, knows it’ll be the safest, least painful path for him, but he can’t. He stomps back toward the back of the ledge and sits down heavily. He can’t stay here, but can’t shake the nagging in the back of his mind either. He tells himself he knows exactly how it will go if they find out what he is, but part of him questions that. Part of him wonders if he could have a place here, if he could know what it’s like to be a Fae again.

He shakes his head. He’s just a pixie. It’ll never happen, and hoping is just a waste of his energy. What does he need that for, anyway? He’s been a loner and a human for this long, and it’s served him just fine.

But…

But maybe there’s a chance. Maybe he won’t be ridiculed.

He comes to the idea before he even realizes it. He’ll find Furiosa and tell her what he is. He’s been holding in this secret for so long that he just wants to scream it out to the world, to tell  _ someone _ what he is. And who right now can he trust more than her? He doesn’t know if he’d go as far as to say he trusts she’ll accept him, but maybe he can just get this out of his system at least. He’ll tell her and she’ll shun him and then he’ll have no choice but to go back out into the wastes. 

It takes him another day and a half of pacing, cursing himself, and deliberating before he decides he’ll do it. His supplies are practically gone, and if he can’t make himself leave, can’t tear himself away from the past and the fairies, then he’ll just have Furiosa make him leave.

But how does he get  _ in _ to the Citadel now? If he could climb up again, he could maybe sneak back down that elevator shaft, but he doesn’t know his way around inside. He’d never find her.

But here, right in front of him, is a place he knows she spends time. If only he could get in.

He goes back to the dome, starts at the wall, and works his way around. Maybe there’s a gap.

The ledge narrows as he comes to the front of the dome, but it’s still wide enough for him to traverse. He’d be nervous about walking it at human size, but as he is he should be fine as long as a strong wind doesn’t pick up. He continues on, scanning up and down each glass panel for a way in.

He hasn’t found anything by the time he reaches the wall at the far side of the dome, and he sits down with a sigh. He cranes his neck and looks up at the wall. He’ll have to climb. He stands reluctantly, approaches the wall, and hoists himself up.

His hands are screaming in pain again, old cuts split open and new ones made during the climb by the time he flops onto a ledge at the top. His muscles ache from the effort, and he lays there, just breathing for a while.

Now what?

Memories of the rat hunt a few days ago flash through his mind, and he’s even more loathe to risk repeating something similar than he was to climb back up here. The only way he knows to not be mistaken for a rat, or found in this tiny, vulnerable form is to just be human. He doesn’t know how tight security is in the Citadel but… He stops short at that thought. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Furiosa should be in charge here. Or at least everybody here and below knows who she is. Even if he gets himself caught while trying to find her, maybe they’d bring him right to her. If not, he’s sure he could be insistent enough about seeing her to at least get word of him to her, and he doesn’t doubt that she’d come find him then.

He moves away from the ledge, crouches low, and pops himself back to human size. He breathes a sigh of relief as his wings sink back under his skin, no longer pressed under clothing, uncomfortably confined.

He straightens up. If he can’t find her, all he has to do is find someone who knows where she is. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?


	9. Chapter 9

He’s been wandering through the depths of the Citadel for nearly an hour by the time he finally gets frustrated and stops with an annoyed growl. The few people he’s stopped and asked about Furiosa’s whereabouts haven’t been able to tell him much. They all know her - that’s a good sign - but they don’t seem to know  _ where _ she would be right now. To top it off, nobody he’s run into has seemed to even notice or care that he’s not supposed to be here. There hasn’t been even a trace of what he’d call security in this place. He can’t find her, and can’t even find someone to take him to her. He’s no closer to where he needs to be, and is in fact now completely lost within the tunnels.

He finally reaches a place where there seems to be a steady flow of people - a few here and there, all heading in the same direction. He follows, simply because these people seem to know their way around and he certainly doesn’t, and there are only so many rooms and places inside this mountain a person could be, right?

He finds himself following a group of rowdily-talking young men - they can’t be any older than 17 or 18, he’d guess. They shove and smack at one another playfully, chuckle and make rude comments. One of them has a set of small knobby lumps on the back of his shoulder and some puckered scars farther down his back, pink and still somewhat fresh looking.

They’re talking about turnips.

Max tries to ignore them, and follows at a discreet distance and tries not to bump into anyone else as they move into a narrow, steep stairwell.

Part of the left hand wall is cut away and barred with chain link, and Max recognizes the elevator shaft. He peers upward and tries to gauge how far down in the tower he’s come. It’s as he’s peering, not exactly paying attention to the bumbling body forcing its way up the stairs against the flow, that Max, unfortunately, meets a roadblock.

“Oi, watch it!”

A hand catches his elbow and pushes a little more roughly than was strictly necessary, and Max’s head swivels around, eyes locking onto a scarred face and beady eyes set into a half-hacked away mop of dirty hair.

It’s not been long enough - Max doesn’t think it could  _ ever _ have been long enough for him to forget this man’s face, or the cruel twist of his mouth as he would spin the bloodbag cages.

“You!” The Organic Mechanic says, hand tightening on Max’s arm. “Th’fuckin’ storm - how are you still alive?” His lips curl into a wet, crooked, hungry grin. “Oh, this is too good to be true!” His other hand comes up, wraps around Max’s lapel and pulls him toward him slightly.

Max feels himself go all stiff, body hard and unyielding, and in the half a moment it takes for him to be pulled forward a step, his fist curls and his arm rocks forward hard and fast. He catches the slobbery bastard dead center of his face and a spray of blood comes from both of the man’s nostrils.

The Organic Mechanic doesn’t release his arm, but the hand formerly clutching Max’s lapel slaps to his own face and he drops, pulling Max with him in a series of painful somersaults down the sharp, uneven stairs.

Someone screams, a woman somewhere, or a young boy, Max can’t tell. Hell, it may have been him - he’s never been a fan of falling, especially down stairs.

They roll, take down two of the young men Max had been following, and spill out of the stairwell into a cavernous room filled with the scent of steam, fire, and cooking vegetables.

Max struggles free once he and the tangle of humanity around him hits the floor. He stumbles away dizzily, but is yanked back to the ground when two hands wrap around his ankle and pull. He goes down hard on his front - wind barking from his chest with a sound like a backfire and he wheezes, rolls over with fists leading, aiming at anyone and anything around him.

Two more faces dent under his fists before a stool catches him in the side and knocks him into the wall. There is a rush of people gathering, yelling, some loudly proclaiming bets.

The two boys who Max and the Organic Mechanic unintentionally rolled into their quarrel are bloodied, and their friends join the fray. Max kicks - swings a fist - bites the hand that comes for his face—

He ignores the pain in his side, the bruises forming up his back and on his chin. He fights and scans the edges of the room for an escape route, but people are crowding close, eyes wide in terror and glee and worry. Some older men are trying to push everyone back, arms out before the mob and shouting: “Stop it! Lads, stop it now! Was an accident!”

But accident doesn’t cover it, not really…

The Organic Mechanic is on his feet and comes at Max again with bloody hands raised - “Just a min—”  Max kicks at him but a strong arm catches him around the waist from behind, lifts him high into the air and slams him back-first into the ground.

His head makes a dull cracking sound against the stone, and for a few breathless seconds the world goes kind of grey. Max hears his blood rushing in his ears, feels it trickling from his nose - he feels himself wheezing and realizes he’s on his feet, practically being dragged by a man the size of a tank. He’s tall, brutishly built, and wearing a pair of welding goggles shoved up onto his head. He also has a dainty assortment of flowers and plants tattooed around his shoulders like a wreath, and a skull painted in green on his chest.

Max’s hands get tied quite tightly behind his back, and his shirt and jacket are bunched up tightly around his throat from where the man has hold of a fistful of his clothing at the back of Max’s neck, scruffing him like a troublesome animal. Max wonders, briefly, what would happen if he just let his legs go limp. Would the man be unfazed and continue carrying him at arm’s length as if he were a wet rag?

Max twists his neck to look over his shoulder and gauges the size of the man’s arm against his own thigh and decides that resisting would do little good, so he lets his feet continue to shuffle weakly along, holding at least part of his weight.

“Need to see Furiosa,” he grunts to the man behind him.

The brute doesn’t even acknowledge him.

“‘S important,” Max presses.

“You don’t get to make demands, little man,” the guard finally responds, continuing to half-drag Max out of the large room and into a more narrow tunnel.

“Take me to see her,” Max insists anyway.

“Shut up,” the man says gruffly, shaking Max by the back of his jacket. “Who are you anyway? How did you get in?”

Max keeps his mouth shut this time, but it only gets him slammed up against the wall with a hand tightening around his throat.

“Who are you?” He’s not squeezing hard enough to hurt Max - yet - but he’s definitely skilled at getting his point across. Still, if Max ends up locked in some prison cell rather than getting taken to Furiosa, he will have taken several steps backward from where he was, and all he really wants to do is get his secret off his chest and move on with his life. 

“Have Furiosa tell you,” he grunts out.

The larger man growls and yanks Max away from the wall, then grabs a fistful of the back of his jacket and shirt again and shoves him forward down the tunnel. When they come to a T in the tunnel, one direction leading up a set of stairs and the other down, the man pauses only briefly before turning Max up the stairs and pushing him onward.

They go up and up, and Max smiles a bit when he realizes he’s being taken exactly where he wants, but quickly wipes it off his face and pretends to be defiant. The tunnels they walk through now are high enough in the tower to have skylights and windows along the way. This is an area where people live and work, not where they lock prisoners. The guard gives him one final push and opens a door in front of him.

“Imperator—”

Furiosa sighs and stands up from the table where she was examining some old, half-rotten books. Her eyes linger on the book in front of her. “I told you not to call me that…” She stops short as she looks up and sees Max, and he can tell for a moment she’s actively hiding a little smirk herself, but she quickly gains composure and looks at the two men in front of her with the hard gaze of a leader.

“Found him starting a fight in the mess hall,” Max’s captor tells her. “He won’t say how he got in, but insisted on seeing you. Should I—”

“I can handle him,” Furiosa assures the man behind Max. The guard pauses, and Max wonders for a moment if he’s going to argue, but he simply nods and gives Max a shove forward before he turns and leaves, probably disappointed that he didn’t get to throw him in a cell after all.

Furiosa’s face remains stony until the guard slams the door shut behind him, and then the smirk creeps back across it. “There are easier ways to find me, you know.”

Max grunts. “Would’ve been open to suggestions.”

“It’s good to see you, Max,” she says with a warm look, and Max swallows back a lump in his throat. He gives a faint nod, but can’t get his voice to work well enough to return the sentiment. He came here for one reason, and as much as he wants to just put it off now that he’s here, he also wants to be out from under the anxiety of the question weighing down his mind.

He half turns his body and pulls his shoulders up, indicating his tied wrists, and Furiosa makes an amused sound. She walks over to untie him and Max tries not to let himself shudder at the touch of her skin against his. Being so close to her again makes the deep  _ wanting _ of her company butt heads with the fear of her finding out what he is.

When the rope comes loose and she steps back away from him again, he wipes at the blood under his nose with the back of his hand and makes himself speak.

“Came here…” He swallows hard again. “Gotta tell you somethin’ before I…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but clears his throat instead and looks up at her nervously.

Furiosa shifts her weight where she stands, looking at him with a calm and steady gaze, and Max glances around him briefly. There’s a tall stool not far behind him, and he pulls it over and seats himself on it before his shaking legs decide to give out under him.

_ Just get it over with, Max. _

He looks up at her again. Her gaze on him is even and almost soothing, as long as he doesn’t let himself think about where all this could lead.

“I’m… I’m, uh…” He stumbles multiple times, and stops. Furiosa waits patiently. “I’m like you,” he finally gets out. Furiosa watches him calmly, and he realizes that was vague. “I’m a…” Words fail him again. He can’t say it. He looks at her nervously, then sheds his pack and jacket slowly and pulls the back of his shirt up to his shoulders. He swallows hard, his hands shaking. He’s faced down people trying to kill him more times than he can count, looked death in the eye, and yet this is the most terrifying thing he thinks he’s ever done.

He can’t back out now. He’s spent so long thinking about this, so long hiding and deliberating. So long just needing to know how it’ll be taken. He has to let her know. Slowly, he lets his wings emerge and spread, until they’re their full size, his greatest secret bared for her to see. He keeps his eyes on the floor, doesn’t meet hers even as she steps slowly toward him. He doesn’t want to see the expression on her face, doesn’t want to see disgust.

This wouldn’t be so bad if he had proper wings. Pixies with normal-looking wings could blend in. They didn’t have to worry about being immediately chased away by their full-blooded kin. But his don’t look like fairy wings, they look like bug wings. There’s no color to them, no iridescence, nothing beautiful like he has seen in every other set of fairy wings he’s laid eyes on. They’re short and stumpy, falling shy of a normal fairy wingspan considerably. They don’t even let him fly properly. He had always heard them called  _ ugly _ when he was a kid. He used to try to color them in with markers, to make them match the beautiful colors of others’ wings, but that just made the other Fae children laugh harder. To make matters worse, his wings are now covered in ugly black lines, the words labeling him as a commodity broken up across them.

Furiosa takes another step forward, and Max keeps his head down, his wings quivering, his whole body vibrating minutely with fear of what she will say. He can feel her reach out toward them, but then she stops, and her hand falls to her side again. Maybe she’ll be kind enough to make it quick and merciful, tell him he’s an embarrassment of a Fae and let him go back to the wastes to live his life as he always has.

“Max, I know. I’ve always known.”

Max looks up at her suddenly, his eyes wide. She had known? This entire time, she had known? But that tone wasn’t rejection, or derision, or hatred. That was acceptance, kindness. He can barely wrap his head around it.

But all this time... He could almost laugh at himself, for all the time he spent agonizing over the others finding out, when she had known from the start. But how had she known? He doesn’t need to even ask the question, apparently it’s written all across his face.

“Fairies can sense each other,” Furiosa says, sounding a little confused. “Can you not?”

Max shakes his head. He’s only got half the magic a real fairy has. He’d always known he was missing abilities that others had, but he never really knew the full extent of what they could do that he couldn’t. For all he had known, other fairies could only sense when another used their magic, as he could. That was all he had ever known, nobody had taught him any differently. 

“Only half fairy,” he explains, though it’s obvious she already knows that, too. 

She nods but doesn’t say anything, and the fear that she’ll tell him she wants nothing to do with a filthy half-blood creeps back into Max’s mind. Furiosa seems to sense it.

“We’re trying to make this a safe place for us to live. An accepting place.” She looks around as if she can see the whole of the Citadel through the walls of the little room they’re in, then turns her eyes back to him. “You’re more than welcome to stay with us.” She instantly looks a little apprehensive herself as she realizes how she had said that. She remembers his answer the last time she said something similar.

Max is silent for a long time, still trying to wrap his head around acceptance instead of rejection. It isn’t at all what he had expected. It goes against nearly everything he remembers from after his father died. “Can’t stay,” he finally says, because he can’t. He’s been a wanderer far too long to just stop. “Not all the time,” he amends. “But… Being welcome sounds nice.”


	10. Chapter 10

“So who’s the poor bastard you hit?” Furiosa is looking at the blood on Max’s hands, and he tries to half hide them self consciously.

“Mm… Organic Mechanic.” Max looks uncomfortable. “Didn’t expect to see him here.”

Furiosa grimaces a bit. “I don’t blame you for hitting him, honestly. The only reason he’s still around is because we needed a healer and nobody else has the experience he does.”

Max nods absently, and she’s not quite sure if he’s actually listening or not. She clears her throat a little uncomfortably herself, and looks over her shoulder at the desk she was working at. She rummages in her belt pouch and pulls out an old handkerchief, then steps toward the desk and grabs the tin mug of water she had been sipping at.

“Here,” she says softly, grabbing a stool on her way back and seating herself in front of Max. 

Max’s eyes stay on her until she sits down, and then he pulls them away quickly, still not quite comfortable enough to meet her gaze. 

Furiosa dips a corner of the cloth in the cup, then holds out her metal hand to him. Max stares at it blankly for a moment. It’s thin and delicate, not built for strength like the one she lost on the way back. He follows it up her arm, sees it’s attached as lightly as it is built, just connected to a strap around her upper arm. She doesn’t have her wings out now, but he bets the lack of belts around her makes getting her wings out much easier. 

His eyes drift farther up, and he notices her looking at him expectantly. He quickly drops his gaze again and lifts one of his own bloodied hands and gingerly places it in her palm.

She blinks at the state of his fingers, then with a little sigh picks one and starts dabbing the blood away, wondering if all the dried red is the Organic Mechanic’s after all. “I hope you left some of him intact, his brain is worth something even if his attitude is shit.”

Max hums quietly. “Didn’t hit him that hard.”

“Oh, no?” She glances up at him sidelong. “Is his head as hard as he is ugly, because this looks like more than a punch.”

Max can’t help a tiny smirk at that, but it fades just as quickly as it came. “‘S not all his blood,” he admits. “Couple others got involved…”

“Those others have teeth?” She prods at a cut on his knuckles and he hisses quietly at the sting. “Because I'm pretty sure they don't anymore. What about you, knock anything loose?”

Max takes stock of his newly-earned injuries, trying to decide if he actually intends to tell her about any of them. He’ll be bruised up later and his head and ribs still ache, but he’s had worse. “‘M fine,” he says shortly.

She nods, hums quietly and continues working the cloth around his fingers and palm, rewetting when needed. “Well, next time… Protect your middle.”

Max looks down at himself in mild surprise. He must have some mark from the stool he got hit with that she saw when he had his shirt pulled up and his wings out. “Mm,” is all he can come up with to say in response.

“You know,” she begins thoughtfully, “If you're willing, I think… I mean, none of this was caused by steel…” She looks up, face schooled into calm. “May be able to just heal it.”

“You can heal?” He asks in surprise.

She hesitates, “Not alone… It- The Mothers, they can.”

Max grunts, then shakes his head. “It’s fine. Don’t need to bother them over this.” He wouldn’t mind being rid of the throbbing headache, but he had come here only prepared to see Furiosa. He doesn’t know if he has the courage to face the other fairies. He knows they know what he is. They must, if Furiosa could tell. And he realizes suddenly that that is why he felt them talking about him the night before they planned to cross the Salt. They weren’t talking about him as just some outsider human, but as a Fae. A Fae they couldn’t trust. Maybe they sensed he was darkened, maybe they knew that he could be dangerous. He was prepared when he came here for Furiosa to chase him away after learning what he was, but now that he’s seen this little window of acceptance, he doesn’t want  _ them _ to tell him he can’t be here.

“It wouldn't be a bother.” She scrubs a little harder at a bit of dirt stuck in a cut on his fingertip. “Some cuts and bruises and cracked ribs aren't even something more than three of us would have to help with. Just a little repair work. Besides, you'll be hurting tomorrow if you don't do something, and I don't want you to be limping around or feverish from anything… Magic reacts badly to that, you'll wind up with green hair or something.” She doesn’t know if that is exactly true, but remembers being warned once that a fairy with a fever was asking for green hair. 

Max crumples his forehead at the mention of green hair, but he remains quiet. How does he get out of this without admitting the real reason he doesn’t want to see the others? He supposes he doesn’t. He might as well admit to it. “Afraid they’ll chase me away,” he says quietly. “‘M just a pixie.” He says the word with the same disdain he’d heard it spoken with so often before. He hates the name, and hates that it will forever remain stuck to him.

Furiosa is still for a heartbeat, then takes his palm and turns it downward against her metal fingers, sweeps her flesh thumb against the scars on the back of his hand, “This was steel,” she says evenly, then shifts and pulls up the side of her shirt, exposing a twisted black mark on her ribs. “This was steel.” She lowers her shirt and touches the flat pale mark on his hand. “You, and your head- Your half human head, did more for me than a thousand fairy healers could have… You are not a shame. You are not a mistake.”

Max’s eyes remain downcast, and his mouth twists faintly with emotion brought on by her words. Not a shame. Not a mistake. He has memories from his childhood of love and kindness and safety, yet never in as long as he can remember since has anybody ever said something like this to him. He almost doesn’t believe it, but he can feel his heart pounding in his chest, his heart rate picking up from the sheer hopefulness of it. For the first time, he actually believes that he could possibly have a place somewhere, that he could belong.

“I promise they won’t chase you away,” Furiosa adds when Max doesn’t say anything. “Let us heal you.”

Again Max is silent for a minute, his eyes locked onto their hands, his mouth opening then closing again as he deliberates. “Okay,” he finally says in barely more than a whisper.

“Come on,” she says, putting the handkerchief and water cup aside and standing up. Max looks up at her for a moment, then slowly pulls himself to his feet and follows her out into the hallway, picking up his jacket and pack on his way out.

“So, ah… When I was hiding,” Max starts awkwardly, as she leads him onward. “Here,” he adds, but isn’t quite sure how he wants to finish the inquiry.

“We knew,” Furiosa confirms.

Max hums. He had figured, after she said fairies can sense each other. There was no way he had been hiding so close to them and they hadn’t sensed him. “But you didn’t…?”

“You obviously didn’t want to be found,” she says, glancing over at him quickly, as if too long a look might scare him off. “So we left you be.”

Max huffs, somewhere between amused and annoyed that he had been right under their noses and they had known, but had let him go on thinking he was invisible to them.

“I know,” she says tentatively, “that you were outside the dome a few nights.” She doesn’t look at him. “How did you find us?”

“Luck,” he responds. 

Her nose crinkles; “I can imagine… What did you do, fly around peeking in windows?”

He shakes his head a little, “I climbed to the top and happened to—”

“Wait.” She makes a little huff of disbelief. “You climbed?!”

Max looks at her, a little surprised at her own surprise. “Mm,” he responds.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to fly?”

Max doesn’t respond for a moment. “Couldn’t,” he says shortly, and Furiosa can’t help but feel she touched a nerve somehow.

Furiosa falls quiet, her eyes returning to the corridor before them. It’s mostly empty, a few crates of books stacked in alcoves, some plants in tin cans under the windows, soft green sprouts reaching for the sunlight.

“It’s just down here.” She motions to a doorway, leading him toward the gentle clank and hiss of the rotating hydroponics. She watches his eyes flick up to stare at the plants growing in long steel troughs, dripped on continuously by a dozen or more small nozzles.

A few drops land on his upturned face and he pauses, gazing upward in wonder at the panes of glass sheltering the greenery. His lips part, confused or maybe stunned, and he turns to peer up at each trough. 

Furiosa allows him a moment to ponder at them, then motions toward a large steel vault door pinned open by a stack of books and crates taller than her. “You can wait in here.”

Max follows her at a distance as she ducks in. The first thing he notices as he steps out of the tunnel and into the room is the paint: words printed on the walls and floor, words of defiance and promises. On the wall to his right is a literal wall of text, finely painted and surrounded by the marks of a thousand hands in white, blue, green, yellow, and pink. They flow outward nearly the complete length of the stone wall. Some hands are missing fingers, some contain a name shakily scrawled in black. Each one is slightly different - signatures, he realizes. A declaration - an Oath.

He sees Furiosa rub at the straps of her arm as she follows his gaze to it. “It was Angharad’s idea,” she says. “The Declaration of Peace… After she healed, they all sat down together and came up with it. Made sure everyone was given the chance to agree or leave peacefully.” She pauses thoughtfully. “They were all awed and scared of  _ him _ … but the girls - the Mothers - they love them. You can’t get loyalty like that through fear.”

Max hums and continues scanning the words, not really understanding them as his mind is elsewhere, scanning the room for the fairies.

Furiosa takes a deep breath and lets it out again. “Well… you - you make yourself comfortable, have a look around. I’ll go find the others.”

Max swallows past a lump of residual fear in his throat.

“Oh, and if you decide to leave…” She seems a little hesitant at the thought, even as she offers it. “Use the lift this time.”

Max snorts and gives her a sideways look, the corner of his mouth twitching.

She leaves without another word, the sound of her boots on stone fading.

Max feels suddenly exposed and pulls his shoulders toward his ears a little. He gives the room another long look and steps cautiously toward the wall of the dome.

There are a multitude of plants around the glass. Flowers, leafy ferns Max can’t remember ever seeing before. There’s a steel drum with a sapling in it, leaves shy and shivering in the sunlight.

Max spots the plant he’d hidden behind days ago and approaches, placing himself roughly where Furiosa had been, and crouches, peering back through the glass, wondering if he’d been as stealthy as he’d believed. He’s still annoyed with himself that he’d spent so long just staring and watching when they knew he was there.

It’s after he’s turning away, face hot with embarrassment, that he notices an assortment of tiny objects tucked into a niche between a stack of books and the edge of the wall.

He eases himself down, bad leg extended, and carefully draws them out, piece by piece.

There is a small hollow reed with holes down its length, about the length of his thumb, and a braided string on which there are an assortment of small bells made of fine silver. He gives the bells a gentle shake and feels his heart skip a beat. They sound almost like water trickling over smooth rocks.

Next is a small box with metal tines of various sizes. When he plucks at one with his least abused finger, it makes a gentle sound. He huffs, amused, and plucks at another, then turns the little box over in his hand to examine the carvings and detail work on the back and sides: leaves and swirls and flowers much like he’d seen the fairies’ motorcycles decorated with, like seed pods opened to the light. He assumes the little flute and bells are fairy instruments, but this thing hadn’t been made for small hands, though they could definitely still play it if they wanted.

He tucks the instruments back where he’d found them and pushes stiffly to his feet, bad leg protesting. Max looks around the room again, curious and slightly nauseated. Is he really going to do this? Is he really going to show himself to them?

He snatches a book off a nearby pile and flips it open to a random page, trying to distract himself. He’s found books out in the wastes, but few in as good condition as these. No pages ripped out for their paper, no burns around the edges, or mold between the pages… He scans the page he’s opened it to, not really paying attention, instead some part of him just trying to get himself to  _ stay _ .

Furiosa’s promises of acceptance were encouraging, but some little voice in the back of his head says that he would never truly be accepted. They could sense him, they would be able to tell he is darkened the moment they touch him. What then? Would they kill him? Would they cage him? Keep him behind steel and glass until he withers and dies?

He finishes one page, then another. The hope in his chest is going sour. Another page - there are voices in the hallway. Excited whispering.

Instinctually he looks left and right for a place to hide, drops the book back on its pile and takes two steps toward the thicket of bushy plants in the corner, but stops himself. He tightens his hands into fists and bites back a panicked whine. If they can sense him, they can find him even if he does hide.

Damn it all, he’s trapped.


	11. Chapter 11

He hears no fewer than five distinct voices outside. None of them are Furiosa’s. He freezes in terror, and his sensitive ears strain to pick up on words as they draw nearer.

“Why do we have to wait?” One whispers in complaint just outside the vault door.

“I told you, he’s scared.” It’s Furiosa’s voice, a low whisper as well, and he relaxes, though only a little. “I said we could heal him with three. He’s not expecting any more than that right now.”

There’s faint grumbling, then footsteps moving through the narrow tunnel that leads into the room. Max attempts to wipe the look of terror off his face, but the way Furiosa nearly stops short when she steps into the room tells him he probably didn’t succeed. He shifts his weight uncomfortably to his other foot, and Furiosa glances at the two women following behind her.

“Might as well let the others in,” he says hoarsely. He doesn’t expect that they’re just going to give up and leave, so he might as well get it over with now. There’s no escape anyway. 

Furiosa’s look of surprise nearly makes him smirk. 

“I could hear them,” he explains.

“Good ears on that one,” the older Vuvalini comments with a little grin. She looks to Furiosa, who gives her a small nod after glancing at Max one more time, and the older woman turns back to the tunnel and calls to the others. “He says you can come in!”

Max tries to hold himself steady where he stands as the whole group comes in. It’s not just the older fairies, but Angharad too, and the four human women who had been with them in the Rig. Furiosa approaches him with a look that asks without the need for words if he’s okay with this. He gives a small, noncommittal grunt.

“Well, let’s see you, boy.” One of the Vuvalini approaches with a warm smile, though it does nothing to comfort him.

Max looks a little terrified in front of the group of women, an animal in a car’s headlights. He glances at the younger women in the room, the ones Furiosa had pulled from Joe’s clutches. He’d only barely come to terms with other Fae knowing what he is, he’s pretty sure he’s not ready for others to find out. Since the world fell, hiding what he is has been a means of survival. Before the world fell, what he was had always been a source of embarrassment and shame within the human world, and he can’t help but still feel some of that as well.

“Don’t worry, they already know,” another of the Vuvalini tells him.

Max blinks at them and stutters. “About me?” He asks weakly.

The younger women nod, and Max rubs at his brow. All this time agonizing and hiding and running, and even the ones who  _ couldn’t _ sense him had known. He licks his lips and pushes down the urge to run.

“Well come on, then, let’s see you,” someone in the group says, and Max shrinks back a bit.

“Healing first,” Furiosa says sternly. “I promised him that.”

“Alright, alright,” another of the Vuvalini says as she steps forward. It’s the one who had tried to heal Furiosa on the way back to the Citadel. “What do we have?” She reaches her hands out, and Max just stares at them, until she gives a little snort and grabs his own hands and holds them wrapped between hers. She closes her eyes, and Max stands stock still, not quite sure what’s going on.

“Head’s a little banged up,” she says, her eyes still closed. “One broken rib… Don’t even need magic to see the sorry shape your hands are in…”

Max looks around uncomfortably, but she continues.

“And more bruises than I’ve seen on any one person since we fixed up our girl here.” She finally opens her eyes and gives Furiosa a little smirk. Max gives Furiosa his own bewildered look.

The woman in front of him grins. “I’d hate to see the other guy.”

“Gale,” Furiosa says carefully, trying to bring her back to her task.

“Yes, yes, I suppose you want to be rid of all that.” She glances behind her, and Furiosa steps up along with the youngest of the other Vuvalini - Valkyrie, Max thinks he remembers. Gale continues to hold Max’s hands, and he would very much like them back now, but doesn’t expect that’s part of how this works. He watches Furiosa slowly reach out and put her hand on his shoulder, and he jumps when Valkyrie places her hand on his other shoulder.

Gale’s eyes are closed again, and Max stands uncomfortably still, but his eyes widen as their hands start to glow. A wave of magic washes over him, exactly like what he had felt when he first discovered all these women were fairies, when they were healing Furiosa’s wings that night in the desert. He tries not to remember the panic he felt then.

This isn’t just his typical awareness of magic, though. This time he can feel it in his very bones, a warmth spreading up his arms and into his chest. He thinks at first that his hands feel hotter because that’s where it’s originating from, but he feels the warmth concentrating on every area of his body that aches and throbs from injuries sustained. It flows in through his shoulders where the other two women have their hands on him as well. The warmth collects all down his bruised spine, pools in the back of his throbbing head, and grows at his side where he had been struck with the stool. The heat grows uncomfortable, almost burning, and his hands twitch, tempted to pull out of her grasp. And then, all of a sudden, it fades, and he realizes in the wake of it that the pain is gone.

He finally gets his hands back and he turns them over slowly, staring in amazement. It’s as if he had never climbed the wall at all. No cuts, not even any new scars. His head no longer aches, and he takes a deep breath and is relieved at the lack of shooting pain in his side.

Gale chuckles at his expression. “You look like you’ve never had a good dose of fairy magic before.”

Max shakes his head. “Haven’t.”

There’s a brief quiet around the room, as if such a statement is alien to them.

“How long have you been alone?” Valkyrie asks quietly.

Max hesitates. Being alone darkens a Fae, doesn’t it? But surely they’d already know by now if he’s darkened. He’s just waiting for one of them to say something, is surprised that they haven’t yet. “Since before the Fall,” he finally answers even more quietly.

Gale coos sympathetically, and he hears somebody whisper in the group of people behind her. Max tries not to cringe. This’ll be it. This will be where they’ll tell him he’s too unclean, too dangerous to be around here.

“Well you’ve got us now,” one says instead, stepping forward from the group. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

Max feels a twinge in his chest, but he’s still having a hard time wrapping his head around this. All he’d ever known between when his father died and when the world died was rejection. This is too different. It doesn’t feel right.

Somebody claps her hands together then rubs them. “Well, let’s see you! We’re in friendly company,” she says, motioning toward the younger women. “No sense hiding as a human anymore.”

Max stares, trying to keep his fear down. This is what he was dreading. He knows they  _ know _ what he is, but somehow showing them his wings feels like it makes it more real. Exposing what he’s kept secret for so long, even though he’d wanted  _ somebody _ to finally know, is like wading upstream against the heavy flow of everything he’s known and done since he was a child. It’s like fighting against his very nature. Furiosa, he trusted just enough. He’s not quite there yet with these other women. He feels like he has no other option, though.

He takes a breath to steady himself and works himself up to doing this. Can’t back out now.

He wants to tell them beforehand that he’s not darkened, that it’s only tattoo ink that’s discoloring his wings, but he’s sure that would be a lie. He drops his pack and jacket carefully on the ground, and starts pulling up the back of his shirt again, closing his eyes as he focuses on letting his wings emerge instead of thinking of all the eyes that will see.

“Aw, come on. Full form!” One of the older voices calls cheerfully. 

Max freezes and his wings snap back into his back. He looks back up at them, his mouth agape. He can’t hide anything in his full pixie form. He’ll be tiny and vulnerable, and they’ll be able to see every bit of what he is. He had only gotten as far as making himself show them his wings, not shrinking fully down. And, he remembers grimly, in his full pixie form, he has antennae. 

He’d always hated them - short like his wings, with horrible little puffs on the ends - another source of embarrassment, another reason to never let anybody see him like that. He knows that’s unreasonable - all fairies and many pixies have them - but his are just… embarrassing. 

Furiosa, who had stepped back to give him a bit of space, steps forward again as he stands unresponsive, and places her flesh hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

He looks at her, then shakes his head, licks his lips. “No, I… It’s okay.” He’s not quite sure if he’s actually all that okay, but he reminds himself that they already know what he is and tries to convince himself that this can’t be any worse. Her support, at least, makes it easier.

Her hand slips off his shoulder and he strips his shirt off completely, then lets himself pop small, his eyes closed again to ward off the dizziness he always gets if he watches the world expand around him. When he opens his eyes and looks up, everyone is so much taller than he is, giant looming figures all staring down at him, and he backs up, intimidated.

Furiosa is the first to shrink down to join him, and he jumps when he feels her hand on his shoulder again, his own hands tightening into fists. She doesn’t flinch, just looks at him reassuringly. One by one, the other fairies shrink down and approach. Most of them are grinning, and frankly, it’s a little disquieting. They surround him, and Max forces himself to hold his ground.

One lifts one of his wings to look at it, another claps him on the shoulder good-naturedly, while a third pokes lightly at one of his antennae, all laughing cheerfully and talking and smiling. Max glances up as the four other women approach and crouch down to watch the court of fairies. 

“He’s a cutie!” He hears one of the fairies beside him exclaim.

Max turns red.

“And lookit these little fluffs!” Valkyrie grins up at his antennae.

Max turns redder. All their antennae are sleek and poised and dignified. Why do his have to be so ridiculous?

“Your tattoos transferred to your wings?” One of them peers at his wings and back, and Max finally breaks. He can’t do this. He hates that he has that tattoo and hates that it’s on his wings and hates his stupid antennae, and he can’t stand being looked at any longer. He pushes his way out of the group with a mumbled apology and brings himself back to human size as he hurries away, stopping only to pick up his things.

 

* * *

He has found a spot in the far corner of the hydroponics room, hidden in the mist behind the rows of troughs, and has been crouched there for several minutes before Furiosa comes to find him. She approaches carefully.

She doesn’t say anything, just crouches down beside him and waits. Max doesn’t look up. He keeps his face buried in his arms on his knees, though he knows she’s there, could tell just by the sound of her footsteps that it was her.

Max tries to pull himself together. His hands still shake faintly, and he tightens his grip on his upper arms to try to conceal it.

“They’ve got to be lying,” he finally says.

“Why do you say that?” Furiosa’s words are quiet and careful.

“They’ve got to remember the time before the Fall.” He still hasn’t lifted his head. “Pixies back then… They were lucky to be accepted by even their own families.” Max knows he had been lucky to be surrounded by the people he knew when he was young, but he also knew he had family on both sides who did not approve of his parents’ relationship. Who didn’t approve of Max. “We’re unclean. Impure.”

Furiosa is silent for a moment. “I know things were bad back then,” she starts quietly. “I wasn’t around to see any of that, but I know the Mothers remember it.”

Max takes a shaking breath as she speaks.

“But Max, things aren’t like that anymore. There are too few of us left. There’s no room now for those old ways of thinking. It doesn’t matter how little fairy blood you have in you. You’re still one of us.”

He finally lifts his head and looks at her, blinking as if it could wipe away the redness in his eyes. But he shakes his head. “Don’t know if I can believe that.”

Furiosa takes a quiet breath. “Nobody’s going to make you stay here.”

Max’s eyes dart up to her face again briefly.

“But if you decide to try,” she continues, “you’ll see. They’re not lying to you.”

He takes that in for a moment. Coming to terms with acceptance rather than rejection is only a piece of his issues. There’s also darkness. There’s shame. There’s a need to hide that runs so deep it’s practically ingrained by now. “Still. This was a mistake,” Max says. “I shouldn’t have come here.” 

“For what it’s worth,” Furiosa supplies, “I’m very glad you came back.”

Again, Max’s eyes lock onto hers, and this time he holds her gaze for a moment before he pulls it away and focuses instead on the hydroponics shifting around them. “But I’m dangerous. I’m insane. I’ve been alone for so long… What if I’m darkened?” He hates to broach the subject himself, but he doesn’t think he can just keep it buried forever.

Furiosa huffs out a little breath. “By now? We all are.”

Max’s eyes dart back over to her.

“Magical beings weren’t made for a world like this,” Furiosa explains. “It’s hard on all of us, twists our magic, weakens us. But that doesn’t make us evil, or even more dangerous. It’s just something that happens.”

Max is silent. He had always heard growing up that darkened was bad. That it made one’s very mind twisted and dangerous. That it was evil. Gradually, Furiosa has been knocking out all the supports that held up what he thought he knew. But there’s still one thing that won’t be nearly so easy to take down. “I thought I’d never show that side of myself to anyone ever again.” He pauses. “Hell, I thought all the other fairies were dead. I thought I was the last one left.”

To that, Furiosa doesn’t have a confident reply. She may have been alone here at the Citadel most of her life, may have been hiding as a human to survive just as he had, but at least she had known she wasn’t alone in the world. At least she had known that somewhere out there, there were other fairies, and ones who would welcome her back with open arms if ever she got away. Even if Max had been able to get past his fear of others of his kind finding him out and rejecting him, any desire he might have had to be with other Fae was crushed under the belief that there were no more left. He was truly alone in a world of humans, where the knowledge of his existence could have meant the end of his life.

Furiosa can’t quite imagine what that would have felt like. She had clung to the knowledge of her kin still being out there like it was a lifeline. But she can imagine what living through that could do to a person. They’d all been broken, but Max perhaps worse than any of them. She risks reaching out and laying a hand carefully on the back of his crouched shoulder. “You’re not the last anymore.” It would take work, but right now she wants nothing more than to see him through this - if he’ll let her.


	12. Chapter 12

It had been Furiosa's idea, leaving the upper level and going to find some food. Max isn’t sure if it’s her way of offering a distraction, or if she had heard his stomach grumbling. 

He doesn’t say much of anything for a long time. He walks slowly behind Furiosa, almost as if he believes his body is going to start hurting again, that the healing will wear off if he makes too sudden a move. 

The mess hall has been cleared, more or less. There are some people milling around the periphery but it isn’t crowded as it had been earlier. The evidence of the fight before is gone, save for a few small, dark splatters of blood on the floor, hidden beneath dust and footprints. 

Furiosa speaks with the person standing behind a set of steaming pots. Max is unsure of the person's gender; age had made their face and body a unique shape. They speak quietly back and scoop out a serving from each pot onto a plate that looks to have once been a hubcap. 

Furiosa continues to distract the cook while Max receives his own servings and a metal cup of water. What exactly they are saying is of little consequence to him, something about the weather, or the bountiful harvest, some new spices they'd received from the Mothers. 

Max doesn’t stick around to hear the reply, puts himself at a table near the stairs and starts indelicately scooping food into his mouth with a folded bit of tough bread. 

He barely tastes the first five mouthfuls, just knows it’s warm and doesn’t leave the aftertaste of spoil. After that he makes himself slow down, partially because Furiosa is easing onto the stool across from him with an eyebrow raised, and partially because he doesn’t want to choke. 

She eyes him for a moment then tucks into her own food, much slower than he continues to eat even now. For a few minutes it’s quiet between them and Max can tune out the soft noise from around them, though his eyes sweep the room, and lock onto her face to gauge the likelihood of someone approaching his back. 

When she speaks it’s almost a relief. 

“I'll show you a place where you can sleep once you're done. You look like you need it.”

He says nothing but nods a little, swallows, and reaches for his cup, “Does everyone know… About you?”

She shakes her head, “Not everyone. We decided it was best to show them all that we're here to help before we reveal that… if we decide to tell them all.”

He hums around his food. 

“It's a trust thing, I think you can relate.”

His brows lift and he exhales loudly, gives a little nod. That’s an understatement if ever there were one. 

His food is long gone, his plate all but licked clean by the time she finishes hers, but he waits quietly and patiently, his eyes still sweeping the room nervously now and then. When she gets up, he follows her lead, moving over to a little station against the wall where they clean their plates and add them to a stack of others, and then she leads him back higher up in the Citadel.

“Did you have a ride? A vehicle, or have you been on foot all this time?”

He scratches at the side of his neck, pulls on his earlobe. 

She grins. It's subtle, but he catches it and feels his cheeks and neck go red. 

“I can take you out to fetch anything you've hidden once you're ready.”

The rest of the walk is mostly quiet, save for a few wonderfully large women who speak to Furiosa as they pass, one or two with children on their hips or nestled into slings on their chests. Max follows them with his eyes as they go, but turns back to the short prickly hairs on Furiosa's crown and the faint swirls of tiny freckles he can see on the skin between her shoulder blades. He wonders if they had been there before they'd met up with the Vuvalini on the Fury Road and she had regained her wings, and he takes a moment to ponder that as they walk. He wonders if the marks on his own back even show now that the ink has been thrust upon him. He wonders if, like the rest of his Fae side, they too are now buried by the cruelty of this world.

He clenches his jaw and gives his head a little shake. No point in thinking about it now or ever, it’s done. 

“You can rest in here.” Furiosa pushes open a door and the hinges squeal and the air inside the small room is crisp and a little chill from the lack of fires burning to light it. It’s little more than a dark niche carved back into what looks to have been a natural, if small crevasse. 

She steps inside and brings a lamp from the hallway, and the edges of the room come into focus. There’s a cot in the far corner with a blanket folded on a lumpy looking mattress of oddly discolored striped fabric. To his left there’s a small workbench with a three legged stool pushed under it and a few hollows carved in the wall to make shelves. 

He glances up and notices a grate in the ceiling behind which is a craggy vent which he suspects eventually finds an air tunnel with fans, as the breeze blowing through it smells lightly of the gardens up top. 

Furiosa stands a moment as Max takes in the room, then she seems to become self-conscious and moves toward the door. She pauses. “If you need anything at all… My room’s at the end of the hall, on the left.”

Max gives her a single nod, and with one last glance, Furiosa leaves, closing the door carefully behind her.

Max studies the room around him a little longer, but now that he’s left with a moment to himself, the exhaustion in his bones weighs on him heavily. He flops onto the cot, half covers himself with the blanket, and is asleep within minutes.

The sun is out, but the air is still cool, and Max hikes his backpack up onto his shoulders. He glances backward, catches sight of his mother sitting behind the wheel of their -  _ her _ car, and she gives a smile, lifts her hand, but Max turns away quickly, hunches forward as if he hadn't seen. 

A few children push past him, bump his shoulders roughly on their way up the path. One mutters, “watch out, half-breed,” as he goes. 

Max tries to ignore him, tries to ignore the others who roll up their lips and flick fingers at him threateningly, young magic glowing in their fingertips. 

The hallways aren't crowded, not in a modern Fae school. They are wide and open and lined with tan pots filled with greenery and flowers that climb halfway to the skylights in the ceiling. 

Max keeps to himself, tries to stay out of the way of the other children as best he can when their paths veer toward him dangerously. Sometimes he wonders why they can't just leave him alone like they do some of the other pixies. But, then he'll see one from the edge of his vision, notice how they can blend in, how they are almost undetectable amongst the fully Fae children. Only those who pass as fairies are unmolested here. 

There are lockers in each home room, one for each child, decorated with flowers, or leaves or little colorful stones. Last year Max had tried to decorate his but every morning would come in to his little twigs and sprigs of greenery trampled on the floor, or missing entirely. 

The teacher had put a stop to it a few times, and he could go a week, maybe two, where nothing was bothered, but that didn't mean much, and eventually they'd start again. After a while Max stopped collecting things and pasting them up. It wasn't worth it. 

This year, he didn’t even try. He stands in front of his locker and stares up at his name in fine green script on the card taped to the plain door before he throws it open and tosses his bag inside. He takes his seat before the bell even starts ringing, and looks over to where his friend Zeke is sitting at the desk next to his. Most teachers spread the pixies around the room so everyone  _ has _ to get along, but this year, his teacher lumped all the pixies in the corner together.

Mr. Timms.

Max doesn’t particularly like Mr. Timms. He’s strict, expects perfection, and gives little allowance for shortcomings. Worse yet, his expectations are geared toward full-blooded fairies, and his curriculum in fairy-specific studies and practices are unfair to most pixies in one way or another.

Max had spent the year so far putting up with Timms making remarks under his breath when Max asked to go to the toilet, or when Zeke asked if he could sit with his mother, one of the first year's teachers, during lunch. He nearly brought Max to tears on more than one occasion, rapping him sharply on the head between his antennae when his eyes scanned the room during work time, or forcefully pushing his head back toward his books when he glanced up at the clock on the wall for a little too long. 

Today’s lesson starts with transformation practice, and ends less than half an hour later with Zeke crying in frustration as Timms brings him to the head of the classroom and chastises him for not being able to shrink down. He shouts down at the boy's head that the only way to pass is to learn to control one's magic enough to shrink and grow at will, without the ‘popping’ effect that is so common in children just accessing their abilities for the first time. 

“You should have learned this three years ago! I don't know what kind of lazy instructors you've had since then, who have been so negligent as to ignore this failure, but I won't have it!” He points harshly to the back of the room where Max sits with his jaw clenched. “Even Rockatansky can do it and you have twice the raw magical talent as he does!”

Zeke starts to turn purple with withheld sobs, his magic making his hair stand on end from the static buildup. 

But Timms continues, keeps pushing and pushing until Zeke drops into a crouch, sobbing loudly. Max launches out of his seat in defense of his friend, unable to stand silence a moment longer. 

“He CAN'T! His magic doesn't work like that! Are you stupid? Look at him! If he could do it he would have by now! HE CAN'T! Just like I can't fly, or change the colors of flowers, and Pru can't make eggs cook in their shells! It's not how he works!”

“Not how he works?” Timms shouts, and every eye in the room turns onto Max. 

“Any fairy worth their wings can shrink, even you can do that and look at the pathetic figure you cut! But that's just it isn't it. You're not a fairy. You, him, and Pru,” Timms’ face contorts and he moves forward slowly but all at once, seems to just slingshot himself into Max's space. “You're not fairies, you're filthy little  _ pixies _ . You're all a disgrace! Disrespectful, deceitful little mongrels. Your father would be ashamed of you! Not even enough magic in your bones to fly. Tiny little wings, like a bug’s! That's what you are, kid, a bug. Worthless, and undesirable. When I was a kid the Elders would have tied you up in the middle of the colony and pulled your wings off. They would have cut your antenna off and burned them. That's the only way to get through to your kind. Show them what that human blood in their veins makes them.”

Timms grabs him by his arm and yanks, presses in with a hot spike of magic to keep Max from running away and drags him out of the room to the shouts of the other students.

“Squash the bug! Squash the bug!”

The hallway is dark, lit like a night-time forest, and Max is dragged forward along the path, bare feet kicking dirt and broken twigs up trying to get away, trying to make him stop. 

The Headmaster Mr. Hersh is waiting by a big tree at the end of the path, shrouded in starlight with a red moon hanging over his shoulder. 

“Detention isn't going to do it this time, these pixies never learn.”

Mr. Hersh looks down at him with a shake of his head, grabs Max's other arm and spins him hard against the trunk of the tree. 

There are glistening panes in the naked boughs above him. Max stares and feels a scream building in his chest because he sees shredded wings on hooks above him, bloody joints drawing flies. 

“Only one way to teach a thing like that and make sure it's learned.”

Hersh grabs one wing and Timms another, a foot in the small of his back. 

Max screams and the sound is like a storm gale roaring through the wide empty passages of the world. The scream echoes around him and pounds back into his skull, and Max thrashes desperately, falls, and hits the floor. His eyes shoot open to the dim light of the lantern in the tiny room Furiosa had left him in. He gasps for breath, then hastily untangles himself from the blanket around his legs, but doesn’t try to stand up from the floor. He can feel the violent shaking in his legs even as he sits crouched on the ground.

He’s still got his breath and his heartbeat pounding in his ears when a sharp knocking at the door makes him jump.

“Max? Max, are you okay?”

It’s just Furiosa, and a small part of him relaxes at her voice, but he gives no answer, just stares at the closed door with his heart still pounding.

She knocks again. “Max?” And then, after a moment, worry in her voice, “I’m sorry, I’m coming in.”

He watches the door knob twist and the door swing open with a creak, and he pulls his limbs in toward himself and curls up tight with his back pressed against the cot.

Furiosa scans the room for threats, but there’s nothing here but Max, and she crosses the small room in a couple quick strides and crouches down by him. Max tries to stop the shaking in his muscles, but he can tell by the look on her face that he’s already worried her far more than he’s comfortable with. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Hey, it’s alright,” she says gently. Her hand doesn’t seem to know whether to touch him or not, moving near before backing off again. “You’re safe.”

Max exhales shakily, reminds himself that it was just a dream. It never even happened, but it had felt so real.

“They… they pulled my wings off,” he says hoarsely, not really even sure why he’s letting her into the depths of his mind like this. He just knows that she’s here, and he trusts her.

Furiosa makes a little sound in the back of her throat like something physically hurt her. Her hand comes quickly to rest on his arm as he makes a little whimper and starts to curl in on himself.

“Hey, hey. Nobody’s going to do that to you here. We’d never let that happen.”

Max doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it was fairies in his nightmare that had hurt him, not humans. His life going into adulthood had taught him to fear humans even more than fairies, but his mind has made it clear which he feels is the bigger threat right now.

Instead he nods for her sake, and swallows back a lump in his throat. “Just a dream…” he says, more to himself than to her. But he can’t rid himself of the shaking.

After a moment Furiosa stands up and offers him her hand. “Come on,” she says softly. Max looks up at her, but she doesn’t explain. He takes her hand.


	13. Chapter 13

He finds himself in her room. She tells him to take her cot, says not to worry about her, she doesn’t need it anyway. She tells him that he should get some more rest, if he can.

Max is a little tense, like being here is a step too far, even though she had been the one to bring him in. He’s not quite sure what she hopes to accomplish with this. Now he’ll just be all the more likely to wake her up if another nightmare gets to him. The scent of her all around him is strangely comforting though, and after a while, he manages to relax enough to drift to sleep again.

He wakes to dim, natural light coming in through a slit cut in the rock wall and to the smell of food, and is surprised to find that Furiosa must have left and come back without waking him, if the food waiting on the side of her workbench is any indication. He must have been exhausted; normally he sleeps on a hair trigger, ready to jump awake at the slightest disturbance around him.

She turns at her workbench as he sits up groggily. 

“Hungry?”

Max eyes the food, then nods wordlessly. She reaches across the small room to pass him one of the dishes, and he takes it gratefully.

She seems to have already finished most of her own dish, and she watches in a bit of amazement as he wolfs his down now, but she doesn’t say anything. Half way done and finally sensing her stare, Max stops suddenly and looks slowly up at her. She breaks her gaze away and turns her attention to the pieces of machinery on her workbench in front of her. Max swallows what is in his mouth and clears his throat quietly, looks for something to say to break the silence.

“Do… Do you sleep?” He finally asks. He’s never yet seen any indication that she does. Even the cot in her room had looked undisturbed when she offered it to him, the thin blanket folded neatly. It didn’t look like the cot of someone who had been suddenly woken by a scream down the hallway.

Furiosa huffs out a little laugh and ducks her head before turning back toward him. She points a thumb over her shoulder to a small leather bag hanging on a spike in the wall. “I have a nest.”

Max stares at it blankly, the term familiar and yet strange sounding at the same time. It takes him a moment to remember that he’s unusual for a Fae in his habit of sleeping at human size. Hell, he’s unusual just for his ability to do it. It takes a lot of strength for a full-blooded fairy to not revert when they sleep.

“The cot’s mostly just for show,” she admits. Max looks down at it and nods absently. 

It’s a moment before he speaks. “Living here, before… You were hiding what you were?” She seems so comfortable with being a fairy now, but she couldn’t have survived that way. Not with what he had seen of the Citadel while he was captive here.

Furiosa nods. “It wasn’t easy… Only a few knew what I was. I was lucky,” she says, feeling like the word is a lie even as she says it. Max senses it. “...Lucky Joe realized I was more useful to him as a soldier than anything else…”

Max hums almost imperceptibly. He supposes just about any Fae still alive in this world would have to have a similar story to hers, a similar story to his own. Maybe the Vuvalini are an exception, having had each other to rely on… But alone, a fairy could only really depend on passing as human to survive. Still, he feels closer to her, knowing they shared that hardship. He doesn’t know if any of the other fairies here would truly understand that, but she could.

“I have a bit of time this morning,” Furiosa says after a silence, clearing her throat, “If you’d like to go pick up your vehicle. It’ll be safer in the Citadel’s garages than out there.”

Max hums again, louder this time. “I’d appreciate that.” He guesses this means he’s staying for a little while. 

After he finishes wolfing down the rest of his breakfast, she leads him down to where they keep most of their vehicles, and he hops in the passenger seat of the one she selects. It’s a short ride out to where he left his car, and he carefully checks that none of his traps were tripped before he starts packing up his camp.

“Got quite a haul for yourself in just a couple months.” Furiosa examines the contents of the back of his car, impressed, as Max folds up the tarp he had been using for cover. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

Max shrugs. “Here and there.”

“Who’d you kill?” She means it as a joke, but Max stops what he’s doing and looks at her a little uncomfortably.

“Nobody who didn’t try to kill me first.”

He’s apparently still not going to tell her more than that, so she lets it be. She helps him pile the last of his stuff in the back of his car, then leads him past the patrols and back toward the Citadel.

When his car is stowed safely and he’s brought some of his stuff up to the room Furiosa gave him, he takes a bit of time to explore the Citadel while Furiosa goes to attend to her duties. He’s wary - there are a number of people he doesn’t particularly want to run into, the Organic Mechanic and the guard who had given him a sound beating foremost among them. He doesn’t make it more than an hour or so before someone catches him, and he cringes at the sound of his own name behind him. He stops in his tracks and turns slowly.

It’s the Vuvalini with the white hair. Max doesn’t know if he ever got her name. She smiles and strides toward him.

He knows he shouldn’t be, but he’s still a little surprised that so many of the Vuvalini survived the battle and made it back here. He knows the one with the seeds must not have made it - not with the way Dag seemed to have wished her farewell and taken her bag of seeds before she crossed over from the Rig and left her behind - but so many of the others did. In fact, all of the others, he thinks, if he’s remembering correctly. He doesn’t know what had happened to this one, only that she was on the Rig when they started and wasn’t by the time they reached the canyon.

“Atomic Annie,” she says with a smile. “I don’t think we ever got formally introduced.” Max just looks at her apprehensively. What does she want from him? But she simply continues cheerfully. “So you decided to stay, huh? Knew you couldn’t resist.” She throws her arm over his shoulders as if they were old friends.

Max hums uncomfortably and pulls away. “Just for a little while,” he says. He’s still caught between his desire to be with others of his kind and his terror over how he might be treated, but either way he knows eventually the crush of people around him will become suffocating and he’ll feel the call of the road.

“Well, good thing,” she says, still cheerful. “We’ve got a little celebration planned for you this evening.”

Max looks at her with raised brows.

“Just a little Welcoming party,” she says easily, and the word sends a pang through Max’s chest. His dream from the night outside the dome flits through his head, but he quickly chases it away. These are not his father’s friends and family. It’s not the same. It never will be.

“Mm,” he says in response.

“Come to the dome around sunset. You won’t be disappointed.” 

Max nods but only halfheartedly. If it’s a fairy gathering, he knows they’re going to expect him to be in his Fae form, and he doesn’t think he can do that again. For a moment he’s tempted to give her some excuse as to why he can’t come, but honestly, what does he have? It’s not like anybody or anything else is taking up his time while he’s here.

He’s relieved when she bids him goodbye and continues on her way and lets him continue on his. He doesn’t know where he is by now, but continues on anyway. Not much he can do about it until he finds himself somewhere familiar. He realizes it’s a possibility that he won’t find his way anywhere, and maybe he’ll miss his Welcoming party. He can’t say he’s too disappointed by the idea.

Eventually he sees daylight ahead, and he heads toward it curiously. The tunnel opens suddenly, and in front of him is a rope bridge that leads to one of the other towers. He starts to cross it for lack of anywhere else to go, but half way across stops. It’s strangely calming here. The wind blows past him gently, the sun warms his skin, and the people bustling down below catch his interest, while still being far enough away from him that he feels comfortably separated. He leans against the railing and stares quietly down at them. After a while, he sits down on the bridge, his legs through the rope side, overhanging the edge. His mind drifts.

He had come back here for Furiosa, but even after he had satisfied his need to see that she was still alive, he was drawn to stay. He can’t deny that the fairy culture he caught glimpses of was no small part of that. His mother always tried to make him feel comfortable as a Fae at home, but after his father had died, he had been largely separated from Fae culture.

Seeing it now is a reminder of better times. A reminder of times when he was happy, blissfully unaware of the troubles that would later follow him through life. 

He leans his forehead against the rope railing in front of him.

His father had always thrown fairy parties for Max’s birthdays when he was young. He took every opportunity he could to add fairy influence to Max’s life. Human influence was everywhere in the world, he argued. Max needed to learn about his other half too. He had been a proud man. Max had recognized that, even at his young age. Proud of his heritage, proud of what he was. He taught Max fairy games, cooked him fairy foods, sang fairy songs to him. Most of it is lost to Max now. Too many years between then and now, the memories foggy or gone completely. But he remembers enough for his chest to ache when he thinks about it.

Maybe this fairy party they intend to throw for him won’t be so bad. He doesn’t like people fussing over him, but a taste of the culture of his nearly forgotten half is something he deeply wants, whether he wants to admit it or not.

The bridge moves as someone steps onto it from the tower Max had been heading toward, and he looks in that direction. It’s not somebody he knows, and he turns his focus back to the ground.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there. Several more people pass behind him until he stops paying much attention to them. One person, however, finally stops beside him, and he twitches, foreseeing a threat from the unexpected behavior.

“So tell me,” she says conversationally before he has much of a chance to react. “What brought you back to us?”

Max looks up to see Dag leaning against the rope railing beside him, looking not at him, but at the people below as he had been. He catches an earthy scent from her, and can see smears of dirt on her long shirt despite its already brownish color. He clears his throat, not sure if he wants to tell the truth or not. “Needed to see if Furiosa was still alive…”

Dag smirks a bit and finally looks over at Max. “She’d never let a couple little stab wounds stop her.”

Max nods absently. He’s not really there, thinking instead of the dreams that had haunted him over the last month and a half, dreams of her death, of her rage, of her blooming to life, never knowing which one of them to believe. He reassures himself that the latter was true, but at the same time feels a pang of regret that he’s gotten himself involved here after all.

Dag watches him quietly. Then she sits down next to him, her legs overhanging the edge as well, her feet kicking lightly in the air. Max looks over at her with a crumpled brow.

“Max, why did you leave?” Her voice is gentle, but the question makes his chest tighten up.

Max looks down at their feet. He clears his throat again after a minute as if he’s going to speak, but instead shakes his head. He knows she’s looking at him, but he refuses to look at her.

“We really could have used your help here…”

“Not my place,” Max grunts.

She’s quiet for a moment. “The Mothers have sent out a call… A sort of… magical call, that the Citadel will be a new haven for Fae. The hope is that anyone out there who senses it will come.”

Max looks at her, blinking in confusion and surprise.

“This is where your people are,” she says. “If this isn’t your place, what is?”

Max turns his gaze away from her quickly again. “Don’t have a people. Don’t have a place.”

“You’re Fae,” she says quietly as one last weak bit of her argument.

“Half,” he corrects curtly. “Humans’re my ‘people’ just as much as fairies. Neither of ‘em ever did me a lot of good.”

Dag falls silent. Max imagines the impression of fairies that she’s been fed is one of wholesome acceptance, as if every Fae were family, just because they’re Fae. It’s far from the world Max has known.

“You’re not going to stay, are you,” she finally says after a lengthy silence. Max won’t look at her again. He can tell by her tone that he’s made her sad. He doesn’t want to disappoint her further, but she deserves an answer.

“Never planned on staying,” he says honestly. He just needed to see. He should have left days ago.

She doesn’t end up responding, but she doesn’t leave his side, either. They sit in silence and watch the people on the ground below them.

It’s a long time before Dag finally speaks again. “Hey, Max…”

Max looks over at her with a quiet, questioning grunt.

“They say Fae can live a long time.”

Max grunts again.

“How old are you?”

He’s silent for a moment. “Don’t keep track anymore.”

“But old enough to remember the Before Times?”

Max looks over at her, his forehead creasing. He doesn’t really know if he wants to get into this, but he nods slowly anyway.

“Must have been nice,” she says wistfully. “I’ve only ever read about it. What was it like?”

“It had its share of problems,” he answers. 

“What about the good things?”

Max stares into the distance ahead of him. He doesn’t often let himself think about the good things. “There were those, too,” he finally admits, and that’s all he’ll say. He’s far from ready to open up to someone he barely knows, especially about that subject.

After another long silence, Dag stands up. “Well, I guess I’ll see you tonight. Do you know how to get to the dome from here?”

Max shakes his head.

She smiles faintly. “Here, I’ll show you.”


End file.
